Marie-Louise of Austria, Empress of the French
Jean-Antoine Laurent
According to the inscription on the reverse, Jean-Antoine Laurent painted this portrait of Napoleon’s second wife Marie-Louise of Austria from life. The empress is wearing a relatively plain white silk dress with a veil fastened in her hair. The dress is effectively set off by costly jewellery. Gemstones decorate her neckline and ears, and a double row tiara adorns her pinned-up hair. Laurent’s portrait of the empress captured a tender and sensitive expression in her face.
Laurent was highly regarded as a painter, especially by Marie-Louise’s predecessor, Josephine de Beauharnais. He created several portraits of her in oils and in miniature.1 The fact that Marie-Louise also used his services was not known until this miniature came to light.2 The artist created the piece in the technique of fixé sous verre, in which the likeness is painted in oils on fine silk fabric and then glued to the inside of a bombé glass. It is Laurent’s only known work created using this technique.
B. P.