Portrait of a lady, half-length, traditionally identified as Baroness Aleksinova

Following the death of his patroness, Catherine the Great (1729-1796), Johann Baptist Lampi returned to Vienna in 1797, where he was ennobled by Francis II, hence the addition of Cavaliere in the signature on this beguiling portrait. When the painting was sold at auction in Vienna in 1917, the sitter was described as Baroness Aleksinova, a Russian noblewoman and lady-in-waiting to Tsar Alexander I (R. Pancheri, op. cit., 2011, p. 355, no. 118; though in the catalogue entry she is described as Baronin Alexinoff). The roses in her basket evoke associations with Flora, the goddess of nature, flowers and Spring, and are an element that apparently feature in only one other of Lampi's Russian commissions, the Portrait of Yekaterina Samoilova (Saint Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum). The identification of the sitter warrants further investigation. Lampi continued working for Russian patrons upon his return to Vienna, sending to Saint Petersburg several portraits including those of Yekaterina de Ribeaupierre (1809), Platon Zubov (1802) and Alexander Kurakin (1802; see A. Casagrande, La grande stagione russa di Giovanni Battista Lampi, in F. Mazzocca, R. Pancheri, A. Casagrande, Un ritrattista nell’Europa delle corti: Giovanni Battista Lampi 1751-1830, Trento, 2001, p. 89).