This canvas of Diane de Poitiers Receiving a Message from Francis I captures an intimate moment in the life of the famous Renaissance beauty, an influential woman at the court of Francis I in the early 1500s, as she reads a message from the king. In the background, a man’s portrait hanging above the fireplace may in fact be based on Titian’s Portrait of Francis I, which was first displayed at the Musée du Louvre in 1804 and would have been well known to Pingret. … Although a narrative is clearly suggested by the intensity with which Diane de Poitiers reads the letter, and by the presence of the messenger who waits for her reply to the king, there is no easily identifiable event that might have served as the source for this image.

from Weisberg, Breaking the Mold: The Legacy of the Noah L. and Muriel S. Butkin Collection of Nineteenth-Century French Art (Notre Dame, 2012)