Portrait de la Comtesse François de Sainte-Aldegonde

Boilly's 1803 portrait of the Comtesse de Sainte-Aldegonde belongs to the Consulate period, just before the Napoleonic Empire was proclaimed, when Parisian society was rapidly restabilizing after the disruptions of the Revolution and the Terror. Aristocratic titles were being reasserted, and the Comtesse's commission signals the re-emergence of aristocratic portrait patronage. Boilly had survived the Revolutionary period after a denunciation in 1794, partly by adapting his subjects to republican taste, and by 1803 he was well-positioned to serve the new social order's desire for distinguished likenesses.

The Comtesse is presented in the three-quarter format standard for aristocratic portraiture, with careful attention to the elaborate post-Revolutionary fashions — high-waisted dress, shawl, elaborate coiffure — that Boilly renders with the same documentary precision he brought to his genre scenes. The face is specific and individuated, avoiding both flattery and harshness.