Ed welcomes Dr. Katharine Baetier, curator of the exquisite exhibition, Vigee Le Brun: Woman Artist in Revolutionary France, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, and running through May 15.  Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun (1755-1842), one of the greatest portrait painters during the late 18th-early 19th centuries, served as court painter to Queen Marie Antoinette until the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789.  The 80 paintings and pastels provide a startlingly beautiful record of the royal family and their circle on the eve of catastrophe.

We’ll continue our on-air journey in pre-Revolutionary France with a survey of portraits and historical paintings, architecture, and of influential novels and pamphlets that highlight the period.