Bust of Madame de Serilly, 1782 (marble)

Born in 1762, Anne-Marie-Louise Thomas de Pange de Domangeville belonged to a family which had only recently been ennobled. However, no expense was spared in her education in order to equip her with all the skills and knowledge deemed necessary for a lady of the high society. In 1779, she married Antoine-Jean-François Mégret de Sérilly, who held an important office at court. Her life was marked by extremely dramatic events: her husband went bankrupt in 1788 and the family had to move outside of Paris. After the Revolution, in 1794, she was arrested with her husband and brother with the accusation of having conspired to assist the escape attempt of Louis XVI the previous year. Only the claim that she was pregnant spared her the execution, allowing her to take advantage of the fall of Robespierre and the end of the Terror shortly after. After her escape from prison, she tried to reclaim possession of the wealth once belonging to her late husband and married again twice without luck: both her husbands died of illness shortly after the marriage and she herself contracted smallpox in 1799 dying aged just thirty-seven. When the bust was made, Mme de Sérilly was only nineteen and at the height of her famed beauty here enhanced by the turn of the head and the sensuous lock of hair falling on her bare skin. Always attentive to the psychological characterisation of his sitters, Houdon does not fail to also convey the personality of Mme de Sérilly: her intent gaze suggests a woman of intelligence, clearly aware of her beauty and status.