Portrait of Princess Belosselsky-Belozersky.

The Belosselsky-Belozersky family was one of the great princely dynasties of Russia, and this 1820 portrait of a princess from that house in the National Museum in Warsaw represents Borovikovsky's late production, when he was in his mid-sixties and working more slowly but still to considerable effect. By 1820 the Sentimentalist aesthetic that had defined his prime had given way to the new Romantic mode, but Borovikovsky's style had been formed in the earlier period and he adapted only gradually. The Warsaw provenance again reflects the Russian-Polish aristocratic networks through which Russian paintings migrated westward during the early nineteenth century.

The late portrait shows the assured, if somewhat more formulaic, handling of Borovikovsky's final decade. The face is modelled carefully, and the costume receives his characteristic attention to material differentiation. There is less of the spontaneous warmth of his best work, but the technical execution remains polished and controlled.