This picture belongs to the end of the neoclassical tradition in the Italian States. The sitter is certainly Polish owing to the inscription on the painting itself. It is painted in a style still popular throughout Europe, especially with the monarchies restored as a result of the Congress of Vienna in 1815. An earlier example of the same genre is Girodet’s Portrait of Baron Usquin. The formula was to combine the realism which had trickled down from the French Revolution with a neoclassical elegance which harked back to Antiquity.

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