Wednesday, January 30, 2013

This is NOT Helene Desportes

Today's "this is not" photo installment finally drifts outside of the Brouillard family to this image, supposedly of Helene Desportes:


According to many folks on Ancestry.com (over 200 users, by my estimation) this is Helene Deportes (b. 1620 d. 1675).  According to the Google and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it is "Portrait of a Woman" by an Italian (Florentine) painter dating to the mid-16th Century.

Helene Deportes wasn't alive in the "mid-16th Century," as she was not born until the early/middle 17th Century.  It also seems unlikely that, if the dating were wrong, that this Florentine painter would choose as his subject, a woman born in Quebec / "New France."

Folks on ancestry.com ought to delete / de-link this image.  It is NOT Helene Desportes, and its not a portrait by "V.  Lavaoies" as noted in the title/description on ancestry.com.



2 comments:

  1. LOL I'm so glad you are posting these "this is not" pics. I've seen a lot of erroneous copy and pasted family trees on Ancestry. I found your page by googling "Matou dit Labrie" because I descend from that surname, too.

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  2. Awesome! Thank you for your research!! I always try to find ‘why’ pictures are attached to bios - I’ll definitely be looking for your other posts!!

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