ABSTRACT
The youngest child squirms on his mother's lap (Figure 8.1). He wriggles forward and reaches back, his fingers grasping for a hold on the queen's red velvet gown. He need not fear toppling over, for Marie-Antoinette supports him firmly, her left arm around his waist, her right draped gently over his legs. The eldest child, a daughter, stands at her mother's right side. Leaning into the queen's body, she embraces her mother's arm and presses a cheek against her shoulder. While these three form a compact unit in the visual field, the middle child stands a little apart. Surely he is singled out because he is the dauphin of France, and hence the most notable. With one hand he lifts up a drape to reveal an empty cradle; with the other he directs our eyes to his mother, sister and brother, pointing at them as he looks toward us, his audience.
