Bildnis der Aniela Czartoryska, geb. Radziwiłł

Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun had spent 12 years out of France by 1802, painting her way through Naples, Vienna, St Petersburg and Berlin because her name sat on the list of emigrants. Her sitter here was 20, and had married Prince Konstanty Czartoryski that July at Nieborow. Poland had been partitioned out of existence seven years earlier, so the couple were Polish aristocrats without a Polish state, and the painter was the portraitist of a French court that no longer existed either. Aniela was often ill after the marriage and died in 1808, leaving two small children. The picture hangs at Nieborow still, in the house where the wedding took place, as part of the National Museum in Warsaw.