Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun had a gift for landing on her satin-slippered feet. The moment the mob stormed Versailles in October 1789, and her position as Marie Antoinette’s favourite painter began to seem less than ideal, she fled France for Italy with her six-year-old daughter.
Le Brun had amassed a fortune painting the aristocracy, although she had to leave every sou behind, along with her husband (less tragic since she wasn’t too fond of him). Even so, she only thrived. As Paris went up in flames, she whiled away her 12-year exile at the courts of Naples, Vienna, London and St Petersburg, dining out on all of Europe’s lurid fascination with things French and turning herself into one of the most sought-after portraitists of her
