Portrait of a Lady as Hebe
c.1750RCIN 420545
Hebe, Greek goddess of youth and cup-bearer to the gods, holds a flask from which she has poured nectar into a cup on the right. Her father, Jupiter, is seen behind in the form of an eagle. Sitters often impersonate Hebe in French eighteenth-century portraiture, suggesting that they share the goddess’s youth and beauty.
First recorded in the Royal Collection in 1870