Madame de Serilly

Anne-Marie-Louise Thomas de Domangeville, Madame de Sérilly (1762–1799) was a well-educated lady of high society, famed for her beauty. At the time this bust was sculpted, she and her husband, treasurer-general in the war ministry, lived in a splendid house in the fashionable Marais district of Paris. In 1794, during the height of the Revolution, the couple was arrested. Madame de Sérilly’s husband was executed, while she was spared because she claimed to be pregnant. After two further tragic marriages, she died in 1799 at the age of thirty-six. Houdon, the leading French sculptor of his time, was renowned for his portrait busts. This superb example was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1783.