Giuseppina Grassini Playing Zaire

Giuseppina Grassini Playing Zaire from 1805 at the Musée de Rouen depicts the celebrated Italian contralto who was Napoleon’s mistress and the leading singer at the Paris Opéra. Vigée Le Brun’s theatrical portrait captures Grassini in her role in Voltaire’s tragedy, combining operatic grandeur with intimate portraiture. Vigée Le Brun was the most technically accomplished and socially successful woman painter of the eighteenth century, achieving membership of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1783 and a clientele that extended from the French royal family to the courts of Russia, Austria, and Italy during her decade of exile following the Revolution. Her portrait manner combined the neoclassical formal values of her training with a quality of feminine intimacy and emotional warmth that made her portraits of women and children especially celebrated. Her ability to make her sitters appear simultaneously dignified and approachable was the technical foundation of her social success.

The theatrical costume provides dramatic color and texture. Vigée Le Brun renders the performer’s expressive features and dramatic gesture with the animation that characterizes her best theatrical portraits.