Portrait of a young lady

This portrait is one of the first by the gifted sculptor Marie Anne Collot, who at a very young age joined Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne's atelier as a model and soon proved to be able to work with terracotta, becoming his apprentice.
She then entered Etienne Mauricel Falconet’s workshop and travelled with him to Russia, to work for the court of Catherine II from 1766 to 1778. At that time she was not yet in her twenties, but she was already a claimed portraitist with a dozen high-quality busts in her catalogue: among the most famous are the bust of Diderot, who we know admired Collot’s work, and the many she produced for the Muscovite court, of which numerous proofs remain at the Hermitage.