Portrait of Marie-Louise Elisabeth d'Orléans as Diana by Nicolas de Largillière

This portrait, characteristic of the manner of Nicolas de Largillière, represents Marie-Louise-Élisabeth d'Orléans. The identity of the sitter was discovered by comparing it with another portrait of her in Source, held by the Frost Museum in Miami and attributed to Nicolas Largillière. This painting shows the Duchess of Berry in her widowhood, as in the portrait kept at the Château de Champs-sur-Marne. The eyes are mischievous, the mouth voluptuous, but the Duchess has become a "Rubenesque" beauty. In the Champs-sur-Marne portrait, Marie-Louise-Élisabeth d'Orléans chose to portray herself as Diana, a fashion that continued until the mid-eighteenth century.

In his Réflexions sur quelques causes de l'État présent de la peinture en France, published in 1747, the influential art critic Étienne La Font de Saint-Yenne described the rise of this phenomenon, explaining it in terms of the flattering effect that mythological costume could have on the representation of young, pretty women. He points out that the sensual portrayal of a youthful goddess encouraged women whose real age and appearance were at odds with the ideal image suggested, to offer themselves up to ridicule.

This seems particularly true of this portrait of Marie-Louise-Élisabeth, who, although officially called "Mademoiselle", was unofficially nicknamed "Joufflotte" because of her buxom figure, or the "Venus of Luxembourg".

The eldest daughter and first child of Philippe II d'Orléans, Duke of Orléans and future Regent, Marie-Louise-Élisabeth married Charles de France, Duke of Berry, in 1710 and was widowed in 1714.

Often portrayed as the emblematic figure of the Regency because of her debauched lifestyle, historiography presents her as a nymphomaniac and bulimic young widow. Her notorious gluttony and drunken pleasures only accentuated her natural overweight, as did her dynamic sexuality, which resulted in numerous illegitimate pregnancies. The Duchess's protruding belly did not escape the scrutiny of the public, who were always on the lookout for the slightest increase in "the fecund Berry"'s weight. She died after a difficult childbirth at the age of 23.

The "Messaline de Berry" was neither ashamed nor embarrassed of her condition, and made an exuberant display of luxury, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting and her guards, dressed in flapper gowns with sumptuous fabrics and adorned with the most precious jewels. The criticism levelled by the Duc de Saint-Simon in his Mémoires, a well-informed man insofar as his wife was the Duchess's lady-in-waiting, bears witness to the general disapproval at court of the first Lady of the Realm at the Court of her father, Regent of France.