Portrait of Giovanni Paisiello

This 1791 portrait of Giovanni Paisiello at Versailles depicts the celebrated Neapolitan opera composer who served as music director to Catherine the Great in St. Petersburg. Vigée Le Brun painted the composer during her Italian exile, capturing one of the most influential musicians of the late 18th century at the height of his fame. 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 portrait captures the composer’s creative personality through an alert, animated expression. Vigée Le Brun renders the musician’s features with characteristic warmth while the relatively informal composition suggests artistic temperament.