Vigée Le Brun's Home Page | Index to Art Pages | Vigée Le Brun's Gallery ART PAGE 164 Comtesse du Cluzel - 1779 oil on canvas Museum des Beaux-Arts, Chartres View a detail of this portrait. Lady - 1800 Oil on canvas, 95cm x 80cm The sitter is a lady of St. Petersburg, dressed in white. Empress Maria Feodorovna - 1799 oil on canvas The portrait in the Hermitage is 2.9m x 2.1 m, (114" x 82") This is believed to be an oil study for a larger painting. (Art page 176). Empress Maria Feodorovna, consort of Paul I painted a full length portrait of her wearing her court costume and a diamond coronet "I placed the Empress in front of a large crimson velvet curtain... I hurried to finish the full length portrait of the Empress Maria, as well as several smaller paintings of her, and I left for Moscow on 15 October 1800." Born Princess Sophie Dorothea of Wurttemberg in Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland) on October 25, 1759 (died 1828). In 1773, Sophie Dorothea was among the group of German Princesses considered as possible wives of the heir to the Russian throne, the future Tsar Paul I. However, a princess of a more appropriate age was chosen instead. She died in 1776. Frederick II of Prussia then proposed Sophie as the ideal candidate to be Paul's second wife.The Russian Empress, Catherine II, was delighted with the idea.The wedding took place on September 26, 1776. Read the biography of Maria Feodorovna. Angelica Goodden, in The Sweetness of Life, p. 188, writes: The huge state portrait, today rolled up in the Hermitage reserve and unseen for decades, shows Paul's wife sumptuously dressed, and wearing the insignia of the orders of St Andrew and St Catherine and a diamond crown. On the table are maps of the Smolnyi Institute, created by Catherine for the education of the young girls. View the other painting of Empress Maria Fedorovna on Art Page 176 Vigée Le Brun's Home Page | Index to Art Pages | Vigée Le Brun's Gallery