Empress Catherine the Great of Russia (1729–1796)
This intimate portrait of the Empress, which already breathes the spirit of a bourgeois age, is not related to any known likeness of the Tsarina. Although she is dressed here in civic attire, the three medals betray the traditional iconography reserved for rulers. The portrait reflects the Empress’s commitment to the ideas of the Enlightenment and is far removed from the official court portraits of the Late Baroque age. In 1745, Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, born in 1729, became Great Duchess Catherine of Russia. In 1761 her husband was proclaimed Emperor (Tsar) Peter III, who pursued a pro-Prussian policy. In 1762 the unpopular Tsar was disempowered through a coup d’état, and his wife succeeded him to the throne as Catherine II. She governed Russia as an autocratic ruler until her death in 1796. She felt drawn to the ideas of the Enlightenment, but in everyday politics turned out to be an authoritarian and absolutist sovereign, expanding Russia’s power like no Russian ruler had done before her. She also opened Russia to European art and culture.

Helmut Börsch-Supan suggests an attribution for the present painting to the court painter Joseph Wolfgang Hauwiller of Baden (from 1764 active in Rastatt) and compares our painting to Hauwiller’s portrait of Margravine Caroline Luisa of Baden.