Jean-Baptiste Francois Desoria 1797(1797)
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 51.25 x 39 in (130.2 x 99.1 cm)
cyf Portrait of Constance Pipelet Jean-Baptiste François Desoria (1758-1832).
Both once enjoyed considerable renown among the elite of the Paris Enlightenment; today their names are barely known. Jean-Baptiste François Desoria (1758-1832), born in Paris, was, with the exception of some portraiture, primarily a history painter in the Neo-Classical style of his slightly older contemporary, Jacques-Louis David. Constance Pipelet, born in Nantes in 1767, was a surgeon's wife (later divorced) turned writer and librettist; she was noted primarily for her opera Sapho and her Epître aux femmes ( Epistle to the Women). Like her French predecessor of some four centuries earlier, Christine de Pizan, Constance Pipelet celebrated in writing the intellectual achievements of women.
