Portrait of Countess Golovina

By 1797 Vigee Le Brun had been away from France for eight years, driven out when the Revolution turned on the queen she had painted so often. She was working her way through the courts of Europe, and in Saint Petersburg she met Varvara Golovina, a Russian countess close to the imperial family. The two became friends, and it shows. There is no throne here, no jewels laid out for the viewer. Golovina pulls a deep red stole around her shoulders and turns as if caught mid-thought, the way you might look up at someone you know. Vigee Le Brun kept the setting to almost nothing, a plain ground and a single diagonal of light falling across the face.