The original portrait painted by Eriksen in 1782 shows the empress mounted on her horse Brilliante with the St. Sergei Monastery in the background, and Prince Golitsyn approaching with a letter from her husband Peter III asking her to share the throne with him. In her memoirs Princess C.R. Dashkova remembers how the Empress borrowed the uniform of the Preobrazhenskii Regiment from Captain Talyzin. There is a larger variant of this portrait in the Russian Museum, Leningrad