Portrait of Aleksandra Potocka née Lubomirska as Melpomene.

Aleksandra Potocka née Lubomirska (1760–1831) sat for Batoni in 1779 as Melpomene, the muse of tragedy, in a portrait now at the Palace Museum in Wilanów, Poland. She was the wife of Stanisław Kostka Potocki, a leading Polish Enlightenment figure and art collector, and the portrait was part of a pair with that of her sister-in-law Izabela Potocka as Polyhymnia. The Wilanów Palace connection is significant: this was one of the great Polish aristocratic collections, and its acquisition of paired mythological portraits by Batoni reflected Warsaw's cultural ambitions at the court of the last Polish king. The muse conceit — like the Diana or Flora formula — elevated noble women to a plane of cultural and intellectual aspiration appropriate to Enlightenment ideals of female cultivation.

Oil on canvas designed as part of a pendant pair, requiring compositional compatibility with the Polyhymnia portrait. Melpomene's attributes — a tragic mask — would be integrated naturally. Warm but more subdued tones than the typical Diana portrait reflect the gravity of the tragic muse. Batoni's characteristic sharp face modelling records the individual sitter within the mythological type.