One way to keep your marriage interesting is to wed on the opening day of a revolution, as the lovely subject of this Portrait of Madame Pastoret by Jacques-Louis David did.

Adelaide Piscatory de Vaufreland wed Claude-Emmanuel Joseph Pierre, future Marquis de Pastoret, on July 14, 1789. If that date sounds familiar, it also just happened to be Bastille Day, symbolically marking the beginning of the French Revolution.

Things were further complicated by the fact that the Pastorets were aristocrats and royalists, Claude-Emmanuel being a public servant of King Louis XVI, whereas David was a republican. The artist began this painting in 1791 during the early, comparatively moderate phase of the Revolution, when liberal elites like the Pastorets and the Marquis de Lafayette favored bloodless reform. In the beginning, David was happy to stay out of politics and kiss le cul of whoever paid his bills. 

Adelaide poses with her infant son in the cradle next to her and her sewing in her lap, downplaying her high status. She is simply dressed to denote her sympathy with the egalitarian aims of the revolution. When your husband works for the King and revolutionaries are sharpening the blade of the guillotine, it's advisable to leave your diamonds in the drawer when you sit for a portrait. But Adelaide isn't letting a little thing like the Revolution get in the way of her fashion sense. Neoclassicism was in vogue, and her sashed, plain white dress was hot on-trend despite the politically correct messaging. Even Marie Antoinette had donned the look before it was cool, causing a scandal for being too casual; but like the queen her family served, Adelaide’s gestures of humility were not enough to spare her from the rising, radical tide of the Revolution.

With the fall of the monarchy in 1792 and the ascent of Robespierre and his Reign of Terror, Adelaide was imprisoned while her husband fled Paris in exile. Meanwhile, David quickly assimilated onto the side of the victor of the moment, cozying up to extremists like Robespierre and inflammatory journalist Jean-Paul Marat. Marie Antoinette biographer Stephan Zweig described David biasedly (but not inaccurately) as “one of the greatest cowards but also one of the greatest painters of his day...A typical specimen of those who lick the boots of the powerful, always ready to flatter the successful but pitiless toward the vanquished.” When the tide turned again, David was imprisoned himself.

Artist, sitter, husband, and baby all survived the Revolution, though Adelaide watched many of her class go to the guillotine from her window overlooking the Place de La Concorde. David, true to form, only narrowly escaped the “national razor” by faking illness. It appears Adelaide never forgave him, refusing to accept the portrait, which remained unfinished in his studio until his death in 1825. Afterward, she sent her son (the baby in the painting) to purchase it at David’s estate sale in 1826. Amedée-David de Pastoret was by then a strapping young nobleman, famously painted that same year by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Today, the paintings of mother/baby and adult son hang near each other in the Art Institute of Chicago.

As for Adelaide, shortly after the Revolution she inadvertently became a pioneer of daycare. On a charitable visit to the slums, she was shocked to discover two small children, one crying with a broken arm, left alone by their working mother. In response, she opened a room where impoverished working women could leave their kids in the care of a nun by day and retrieve them at night. The concept was so influential that Madame Pastoret still shows up in modern-day books on daycare and early childhood education.

Adelaide’s kindness also earned the admiration of Anglo-Irish writer Maria Edgeworth, who witnessed her work with children on a trip to France and immortalized her as “Madame de Fleury” in Tales of Fashionable Life. This collection of stories cemented Edgeworth’s reputation as the preeminent female writer in Britain, next to Jane Austen. However, Edgeworth was heartbroken when the story she “intended as an offering of gratitude and affection to [her] dear...Madame Pastoret” was panned for “flatness and insipidity,” probably because it dealt with childcare, a subject dismissed by serious (male) critics of the time. Reflective scholarship has since reevaluated Madame de Fleury as a groundbreaking early work of children’s literature.