This beautiful miniature on paper portrays Marie Antoinette. The composition is after Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, a prominent French portrait painter popular among French high society during the latter years of the 18^th Century. Le Brun’s original, ‘Marie Antoinette with a Rose’ of 1783, is currently held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The portrait, which is finely and adeptly painted, is held within an equally impressive frame: formed from gilt metal adorned with foliate mounts and topped by an elaborate pierced ribbon-and-foliage crest, the surface of the frame is adorned with exquisite turquoise guilloché enamel, the colour of which complements the beautiful blue of Marie Antoinette’s dress, as well as the fragment of sky visible behind her.

The painting is signed lower right ‘Schilt / de Sèvres’.

Frame: Height 35cm, width 24cm, depth 2cm
Sheet: Height 20cm, width 13cm