A look at the act of smiling in European portraiture.
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Jusepe de Ribera, "Club-footed Boy," 1637Before the 18th century, most smiles in European paintings were hardly attractive. In this painting of a Spanish peasant boy, a smile revealed poorly maintained teeth.
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Hyacinthe Rigaud, "Louis XIV," 1701In the context of art, the gesture often indicated condescension or scorn, says Colin Jones, the author of “The Smile Revolution in Eighteenth Century Paris.”
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FRANÇOIS BOUCHER, "Madame de Pompadour at Her Toilette," 1758When smiles are seen, they are restrained and do not show teeth.
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Thomas Rowlandson, "Transplantation of Teeth," 1787One of the principal factors behind the emergence of the smile in art was the improvement in dental care.
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Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, self-portrait, 1786The other factor, according to Jones, was the cult of sensibility. “I associate this particularly with the emergence of the novels of sentimentality and sensibility by Samuel Richardson and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who emphasize the overt and public expression of feelings, rather than their repression or distortion.”