Portrait of Sophia Shuvalova, married name Bobrinskaya

The Portrait of Sophia Shuvalova, later married as Bobrinskaya, painted around 1846 and held in the Hermitage Museum, belongs to the final decade of Bryullov's portraiture activity in St. Petersburg. The Shuvalov family was among the most distinguished in the Russian Empire, with deep roots in the eighteenth-century court of Empress Elizabeth. By the 1840s the family remained prominent in the highest social circles, and a commission for a young Shuvalova daughter would have been among the most socially significant of Bryullov's career. The portrait captures a sitter at the threshold of adult life, with the formality of a court presentation portrait balanced against the more intimate Romantic taste for psychological transparency. The Hermitage's collection of Bryullov's portraits, supplementing the Tretyakov's holdings, together constitute the most important institutional grouping of his portraiture.

The portrait employs Bryullov's mature formula for young female aristocratic sitters: a slightly informal but composed pose, carefully rendered dress and jewellery, and a face modeled with smooth glazing to achieve the freshness appropriate to youth. Background treatment is minimal, keeping the figure in clear prominence.