ワルワーラ・イワノヴナ・ラドミルスカヤ

Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun signed this portrait in Moscow in 1800 — she was living in Russia by then, one stop on the long exile that had begun when she fled the French Revolution. Catherine the Great was recently dead, and Vigee Le Brun was painting the Russian aristocracy much as she had once painted Marie Antoinette's Versailles. Her sitter is a young woman, Varvara Ladomirsky, the natural daughter of a countess and one of Catherine's former favourites. She wears the loose antique fashion of the moment, a simple white chemise dress with an embroidered stole pinned at the shoulder, in imitation of ancient Greek dress. Vigee Le Brun stayed in Russia about six years before the pull of home finally took her back to Paris.