A young Lady called Marquise de Fontenay, later Madame Tallien, standing in a prison courtyard and writing on a wall 'La nature L'amour La mort', facing right in white chemise and blue-striped purple sash, her brown hair falling in curls onto her shoulder

A copy of the present miniature by the Marchioness of Santa-Cruz, née Marianna Waldstein, was sold in our Geneva rooms on 25 May 1994, lot 183.
The sitter is traditionally identified as Teresa, daughter of the Count of Cabarrús. Born in Carabanchel in 1773, she left with her father for Paris and married the Marquess of Fontenay. Imprisoned during the French Revolution, she was saved from the guillotine by the Revolutionary Jean-Lambert Tallien whom she married in 1794. Nevertheless, she was notorious for her dissolute conduct, counted among her numberless lovers the Revolutionary Barras and was friendly with Josephine de Beauharnais. In 1805, she divorced Tallien and remarried the Count of Caramán, Prince of Chimay. She died in 1835. She was a talented amateur miniaturist, and the miniature depicting her self-portrait with her third husband and three children is illustrated in M. Tomás, La miniatura retrato en España, Spain, 1953, pl. LXXX.