File:Girodet-Trioson - Madame Bertin de Veaux en buste (1806).jpg

English: Portrait of Augustine Bocquet (1780-1849), wife (1798) of Louis-François Bertin de Veaux In the portrait of Madame Bertin de Veaux, Girodet depicts his sitter in a low-cut black gown, cinched in at its fashionably high waist, with a lace collar "à la Médicis", in perfect accordance with the style Josephine Bonaparte had imposed on court dress of the period. The short sleeves are gathered and fastened with an antique cameo brooch, revealing the creamy skin of her bare arms and the folds of her long ivory gloves, tied with delicate ribbons. A subtle play of light and shadow invite the eye to wander over the curves of her décolleté, framed by the daintily rendered yet magnificently expansive collar. These rippling rhythms may likewise be perceived in her elegant coiffure, marked by the accroche-coeurs, which curve delicately across her forehead, and the “English curls” into which the rest is piled, held in place by a dramatically angled hairpin embellished with a figure of Venus and holding the golden apple, and allusion to the Love. The inclusion of a pointed accessory is not unusual in the artist’s works; note, for example, the butterfly held by a needle in the portrait of the young Giordet in the Louvre.