Portrait of Johanne Salome von der Asseburg

Johanne Salome von der Asseburg (died 1771) was a German noblewoman connected to the Lower Saxon aristocracy. Liotard's 1748 pastel portrait, now in the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Braunschweig, reflects his active practice in German-speaking courts and aristocratic circles following his return from Constantinople. The Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, one of Germany's oldest public museums founded in 1754, holds an important collection of seventeenth and eighteenth-century European art with particular strength in Dutch and Flemish painting, making the Liotard pastel a significant example of eighteenth-century French-Swiss portraiture within the collection. German noble women were enthusiastic patrons of leading European portraitists, and Liotard's reputation—enhanced by his Turkish dress and exotic biography—made him an attractive commission for anyone wishing to participate in the most sophisticated currents of contemporary European art.

Pastel on paper: German aristocratic female dress of the late 1740s provides Liotard with the elaborate textile surfaces he delights in. The pastel medium's soft luminosity creates skin warmth that oil portraits of similar scale cannot replicate.