Marie Antoinette face swap

Where this one comes from

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun painted this in 1783, in a hurry. Her earlier portrait of the queen that year had shown her in a loose white muslin gown, and the Salon took it as the queen of France appearing in her underclothes; the picture came off the wall within weeks. This is the same pose repainted in formal grey-blue silk, made to fill the gap. Six years later the painter left the country overnight, on 6 October 1789, as the crowds reached Versailles.

What is in the picture

The pose of a picture that had to be taken down. She holds a rose out to one side, in grey-blue silk with a stiff lace fichu at the neck, her hair a foot high under grey powder and a spray of feathers, a double rope of pearls at the throat, roses growing along the bottom of the frame. It is an elaborate piece of repair work, painted to look like an afternoon in a garden.

When people use it

It is the face of being extremely composed about a situation that is not composed at all. It fits the photo posted from a holiday that was mostly an argument, the person answering a hard question with a full and cheerful sentence, and any picture taken while something goes badly just outside the frame.

How your face lands in it

The hair is the entire silhouette and none of it is yours: a powdered tower with feathers in it, standing well clear of the forehead, which leaves the face completely open and means your own hairline never has to cooperate. The light is soft and frontal and the head is turned a few degrees. The skin in the original is painted pale and matte, so a photograph full of hard highlights will sit slightly proud of the surface.

Marie Antoinette with a Rose — Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, 1783. Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun died in 1842, so the work has been in the public domain for well over a century. Source

Also in: Paintings · Royal portraits