The Great Mother

IN CÉLINE Sciamma’s 2019 film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Marianne, a woman painter, travels to a manor on a remote island in Brittany to paint the portrait of Héloïse, a young aristocrat. The portrait is to be sent to the Milanese nobleman to whom Héloïse is betrothed.

It is the 1770s, and Marianne has inherited a successful painting practice from her father—a boon for a woman artist of any period. In France in the 18th century, there was a limit on the number of women who could be admitted to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, and they were excluded from life drawing classes (Marianne addresses this by noting she paints nudes in secret). But a number of female painters excelled by painting portraits of well-to-do women and still lifes.

In the film’s second act, Marianne, Héloïse, and Sophie, a young servant, have the sprawling manor and its seaside grounds to themselves. Sans chaperone (and male gaze), their world becomes