Description of the picture:
The Chocolate Girl – Jean-Etienne Lyotard. 1743-1745. Parchment, pastel. 82.5×52.5
Jean-Etienne Lyotard (1702-1789) – Swiss painter, master of portraiture in the Rococo style. Art knows the names of the creators, although they created many works, but in the centuries they were remembered by some one of their creations. Lyotard is one of them. Of course, you can point out a number of his paintings, only in the Dresden Gallery, for example, there are four, but Chocolate Girl – the one that makes up the artist’s fame.
Of course, such a status of a work is based on its exceptional artistic merit. It is not so much striking as captivating. This, incidentally, is the true purpose of the Rococo style. Everything is unusually harmonious in it: the general pattern (shapes and proportions of the figure), the color scheme – a gray silver skirt and a white apron, so detailed and lovingly written with preservation of the smallest folds, a pink cap with white lace trim, a wonderfully painted glass with water and highlights on her, finally, a cup of chocolate – a sample of the finest Meissen porcelain. The name of the model is known – this is a young beauty Anna Baldauf, maid at the court of the Austrian empress Maria Theresa."