When official court painter Élisabeth Vigée-Le Brun painted this 1787, two years before the French Revolution erupted in full force, her intention was to show Queen Marie Antoinette as a motherly, well-respcted model lady, surrounded by her docile and equally-lovely children: her eldest daughter Marie Thérèse (Madame Royale) gazes up adoringly at her mother; youngest son Louis Charles nestles in her lap; while the Dauphin Louis Joseph is seen lifting up the cover of a cradle to show... an empty bed of white sheets.
The infant meant to be shown inside the cradle was Princess Sophie Hélène Béatrice, also known as Madame Sophie. When Vigée-Le Brun began painting this portrait, Madame Sophie was almost one year old. However, Madame Sophie died before Vigée- Le Brun finished painting, and thus Louis Joseph lifts the cover off an empty cradle.
(There's a metaphor in this story somewhere for the doomed fate of the Royal Family!)
Devastated by her loss, Marie Antoinette brushed off consolation from her brother-in-law, saying, "Don't forget that she would have been my friend."
The Dauphin (Crown Prince) Louis Joseph died two years after this painting was completed, in the chaos of the Estates-General fiasco in 1789.
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