Portrait of the Empress Evzenie

The portrait represents the empress Evzenie, described in a specular way by referring to her consort, to three-quarters and with one hand next to the crown. On the background, it is visible a part of the Saint-Cloud castle with the fountain; it is the castle where they started to live in 1852 (the year of the Napoleon III's coronation). Contrary to the other one, this miniature is no signed nor dated, as further evidence of the link between the two works. The two miniatures derive from the paintings, today lost, made by the painter Franz Xaver Winterhalter, one of the best notorious portrait painters of that period. The small size suggests they are official gift perhaps for a political figure (remember the alliance between France and Piemonte during the Crimean War in the fifty's years of the XIX century). The artist, Jean-Baptiste Fortuné de Fournier, especially realized indoors of residences and castles among them Fontainebleau and the Tuileries. His watercolours remain a precious witness in order to study the decorative arts characterising the Second Empire.