| Portrait of Countess Yekaterina von Engelhardt | |
| Artist: | Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun |
| Year: | 1796 |
| Medium: | Oil on canvas |
| Height Metric: | 80 |
| Width Metric: | 66 |
| Metric Unit: | cm |
| Imperial Unit: | in |
| Museum: | Louvre |
| City: | Paris |
Portrait of Countess Yekaterina von Engelhardt is an oil-on-canvas painting created in 1796 by the French painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, from 1796. Its subject, Yekaterina von Engelhardt, was a Russian noblewoman and lady in waiting. The portrait was produced in Saint Petersburg and now is held in the Louvre, in Paris, which acquired it in 1966.[1] It was exhibited in Saint Petersburg in 1905 as part of the exhibition Russian Portraits of the 18th and 19th Centuries.[1]
An earlier portrait of the same subject was produced by the artist in Naples in 1790 and is now in the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris.[2]
The portrait represents Skavronskaia smiling, dressed in a white and blue dress, while leaning on a red velvet cushion. She is depicted on a black background which contrasts with the warm light which seems to radiate from her look and her chest and is reflected on the cushion. She is a sweet and gentle expression and looks directly at the viewer.
For Marie-Jo Bonnet, this painting it is an ode to feminine beauty, softness and tranquility; she also underlines that the painting of Vigée Le Brun was not seen by her contemporaries as typically feminine, but as a personification of grace as understood in her time.[3]