The pose and general treatment of the subject are self-consciously derived from the old masters. The depiction of the sitter is hardly a strict portrait as she is seen in profile and in the act of contemplation. The heavy gold chain she wears and the dress worn off-shoulder is also a tribute to Renaissance and Baroque masters.  A possible date of the painting has to be deduced from the apparent age of the sitter.  Her husband, the Dutch-born artist Ary Scheffer (1795-1858), was well known in Paris from the 1830s onwards but he did not marry the sitter until 1850.

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