When the Metropolitan Museum put Jacques-Louis David's 1788 portrait of Antoine Lavoisier and his wife under infrared and X-ray scanners, the painting revealed that it had been something else first. Marie-Anne Lavoisier had originally been painted wearing an enormous plumed hat decorated with ribbons and artificial flowers. A richly gilded desk sat under the red tablecloth. And the scientific instruments that now define the picture were added later.
The first version showed a rich, fashionable couple. Lavoisier was not only a chemist. He was a tax farmer, one of the men who collected taxes for the crown and kept a share, and the family was very wealthy. David's second thoughts turned the portrait into a scene about science: a plain background, a quiet table, a flask, a pneumatic apparatus, and a bright red cloth. Marie-Anne, who assisted her husband and illustrated his experiments, leans in as a partner rather than a decoration.
She is more than a bystander. Marie-Anne translated scientific papers from English, kept the lab notebooks, and drew the equipment for his publications. She had also studied with David himself.
The painting's story ends badly. The Revolution turned on the tax farmers, and in May 1794 Lavoisier was guillotined. A famous remark attributed to the mathematician Lagrange puts it bluntly: it took a moment to cut off that head, and a hundred years might not produce another like it. The line is likely paraphrased, but the grief behind it was real.
Look at the portrait again, and the tidy lab table feels different. It shows the couple as they wanted to be seen just before everything went wrong.
David's portrait of Lavoisier and his wife appears on our: