Portrait of a Woman as Diana

Born in Mâcon, Montpetit worked in Bourg-en-Bresse, and mainly in Paris. He became a member of the Académie de Saint-Luc in 1766 and was held in high regard as a painter by Louis XV (1710–1774). He made a number of inventions and evolved the process that he called eludoric painting (painting in oils on fabric under a thin film of water and fixing the miniature to the inside of a glass, thus preventing harmful exposure to the atmosphere). Ann Massing ("Arnaud Vincent de Montpetit and Eludoric Painting,” Zeitschrift für Kunsttechnologie und Konservierung 2 [1993], pp. 359–68) distinguishes this method from that of a verre fixé, in which a painting in oils or gouache on fabric is stuck to a glass with a translucent paste (the painting is executed in the usual way and not under water). Many of Montpetit's miniatures in the eludoric manner have been lost. There is a miniature portrait of a boy (Massing, p. 364, fig. 4) in the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, and a signed portrait by him of Louis XV is reproduced by A. Kenneth Snowman (Eighteenth Century Gold Boxes of Europe, London, 1966, pl. 254).

This miniature may be associated with Montpetit's eludoric painting, though it is not close in style to the examples mentioned above, or it may be a conventional fixé. It dates from the 1760s and has been attributed to Montpetit by Bodo Hofstetter (letter of June 19, 1995, in Department of European Paintings files).

[2015; adapted from Reynolds and Baetjer 1996]

Mrs. Louis V. Bell (until 1925)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "European Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," November 5, 1996–January 5, 1997, no. 41.

Bodo Hofstetter. Letter to Katharine Baetjer. June 19, 1995, attributes it to Montpetit.

Graham Reynolds with the assistance of Katharine Baetjer. European Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1996, pp. 89, 95, 186, no. 41, ill., call it Attributed to Montpetit, stating that it may be associated with his eludoric painting, but that it might be a conventional "fixé"; date it to the 1760s.