This remarkable painting of a young woman drawing appears in miniature in an illustration depicting the Paris Salon of 1801, where it was submitted and placed on display (Fig. 1). The painting itself entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection in 1917 and until 1951 was displayed as a work of the renowned Revolutionary artist Jacques-Louis David (Sterling 121). It was not until 1996 that the painting was attributed to Marie Denise Villers instead.
