Nicolas de Largillière, who enjoyed a long and successful career as a portraitist, was sought out early in the eighteenth century by important new clients from the provinces of France. One of them was Barthélemy-Jean-Claude Pupil, who received two judicial appointments in Lyon after his marriage in 1722 to Marguerite de Sève, the subject of the portrait. His wife wears a costume with an embossed and jeweled bodice that looks made of metal but may be silk mounted on molded buckram, a stiff material. The music she touches with her left hand and the words underneath it are for a drinking song of the kind that sophisticated women sang at an evening gathering at home.