Portrait of Empress Yelizaveta Alekseyevna

This 1798 portrait of Empress Yelizaveta Alekseyevna at the Hermitage is a later version of Vigée Le Brun’s portraits of the future empress consort, painted during the final phase of her Russian sojourn. The multiple portraits of Elizaveta that Vigée Le Brun produced testify to the grand duchess’s exceptional beauty and her importance as a patron. 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.

This later portrait may show a more mature rendering of the sitter than the 1795 version. Vigée Le Brun’s mastery of luminous technique and flattering light remains fully in command in this refined court portrait.