For the femme forte, however, pictorial representation had the tendency to make her suffering into the object of the viewer’s sensual delectation. For the French painters Claude Vignon (1593– 1670), Jacques Blanchard (1600 – 1638), and Simon Vouet (1590 – 1649), the femme forte offered an opportunity to combine the female nude with a historical subject. Femmes fortes were of high birth (Joan of Arc and Judith being exceptions) and were distinguished for courage, beauty, and commitment to ideals of family, nation, and noble selfhood. The generic category of the femme forte comprised women from diverse historical and religious backgrounds, including Lucretia, Cleopatra, Dido, Portia, Sophonisbe, Esther, Judith, Joan of Arc, and Mary Queen of Scots. Between the late 1620s and late 1640s, the femme forte (strong woman) was a favored subject of a new coterie of French painters working in Paris.
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