La Belle Chocolatière

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“The Chocolate Girl” by Jean-Étienne Liotard, 1744
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister
Theaterplatz
Dresden, September 2024

“The Chocolate Girl (French: La Belle Chocolatière, German: Das Schokoladenmädchen) is one of the most prominent pastels of Genevan artist Jean-Étienne Liotard, showing a chocolate-serving maid. The girl carries a tray with a porcelain chocolate cup and a glass of water. Liotard's contemporaries classed The Chocolate Girl as his masterpiece. Since 1855 the picture with the serving maid from Vienna, who might have been a certain Nannerl Baldauf, has hung in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden. Theories concerning the girl's headdress run from a cap cover to an echo of the colorful regional caps. The girl's apron features a small bodice. The cup in which the chocolate is served is a trembleuse, used by people with shaking hands to avoid spilling.” (The Chocolate Girl, Wikipedia)

Bartolomeo and Lucrezia

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Portrait of Bartolomeo Panciatichi, 1540
Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi, 1545
By Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo)
Uffizi Gallery
Piazzale degli Uffizi
Florence, January 2023

“Lucrezia di Sigismondo Pucci was the wife of Bartolomeo Panciatichi, a Florentine humanist and politician, also portrayed by Bronzino in another Uffizi portrait. Giorgio Vasari describes the two portraits as: ‘so natural that they seem truly living’. The show of refined garments and jewelry was intended not only to underline the élite position of the woman, but also aspects of her personality through a complex symbology, including the words ‘Amour dure sans fin’ on the golden necklace, a reference to a love treatise written for the Grand Duke of Florence, Cosimo I de' Medici, in 1547.” (Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi, Wikipedia)

Le Balcon

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“Le Balcon” (The Balcony) by Édouard Manet, 1868
Musée d'Orsay
Rue de la Légion d'Honneur
Quartier Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin, 7th arrondissement
Paris, July 2005

“The painting, inspired by The Majas at the balcony by Francisco Goya, was created at the same time and with the same purpose as The Lunch in the workshop. The three characters, who were all friends of Manet, seem to be disconnected from each other: while Berthe Morisot, on the left, looks like a romantic and inaccessible heroine, the young violinist Fanny Claus and the painter Antoine Guillemet seem to display indifference.” (The Balcony, Wikipedia)

See also: Édouard Manet