The inscription on the left of this painting identifies the subject as the taste-setting mistress of King Louis XV of France, Madame de Pompadour (1721-1764), born Jeanne Antoinette le Normant D'Etoiles. Evidently the feathers on the hat seemed eighteenth-century to Modigliani. This is the only painting in which Modigliani ever alluded to a historical character.