Elisa Counis
1812–1847 · Swiss
The story
Elisa Counis lived her whole short life in Florence, where she was born in 1812 into a painter's household. Her father, Salomon-Guillaume Counis, was a Swiss miniaturist from Geneva who had settled in Tuscany under the protection of Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi, Napoleon's sister and ruler of the region.
The daughter became a painter too. Her self-portrait of 1839, an oil now in the Uffizi, presents her with pale, porcelain skin and fashionable curls, holding the tools of her trade with evident pride. Pinned to her chest is a cameo brooch, thought to be a gift from Elisa Bonaparte herself. Her father later gave the picture to the gallery. She died in Florence in 1847, at 34, in childbirth with her daughter Lisine.
