Countess Ekaterina Vassilievna Skavronskaia
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, 1796
This half-length portrait, painted by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun in 1796, shows a Russian noblewoman and lady in waiting smiling and looking directly at the viewer. She wears a simple white dress in the neoclassical style and wraps her arms in a large blue shawl with an embroidered floral border, resting them on a thick red velvet cushion finished with gold tassels. The black background makes a warm light stand out, one that seems to glow from her face and chest and is reflected on the cushion. The composition is restrained, with few secondary elements, so the expressive weight falls on her gesture and gaze. According to the scholar Marie-Jo Bonnet, the work is a kind of tribute to feminine beauty, softness and calm. It is worth noting that the painter had already portrayed the same sitter in Naples in 1790, in a version now in the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris. The painting today belongs to the Louvre, which acquired it in 1966.
- Painter
- Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun
- Date
- 1796
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas
- Dimensions
- 80 × 66 cm
- Museum
- Louvre Museum, Paris
- Genre
- portrait
- Depicts
- Yekaterina von Engelhardt, hairstyle, woman
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