AUGUSTIN-CHRISTIAN RITT (RUSSIAN, 1765-1799) AFTER LOUISE-ELISABETH VIGEE LE BRUN (FRENCH, 1755-1842)

Elisaveta Alexandrovna Demidova was the daughter of Baron Alexksandr Nikolaevich Stroganof (1740-1789) and his wife Elizaveta Aleksandrovna, née Zagriazhskaia (1745-1831). She married, in 1793, aged fourteen, the twenty-year-old Count Nikolai Nikitich Stroganov, who had an annual income of 250,000 rubles. They had had a daughter and three sons, the youngest of whom Anatolii became Prince of San Donato. Elisaveta died in Paris on 27 March 1818.
A variant of the present miniature is in the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow (see G. N. Komelova, Augustin Ritt: Russian Miniaturist 1765-1799. Life and Art, St Petersburg, 2004, p. 135, no. 12, illustrated in colour). The location of the original painting by Vigée Le Brun is unknown.