Celebrity Sitters
In Italy, she visited Rome, Bologna, Florence, Naples, and Venice, where she studied the works of the great masters. While in Rome, she was invited to paint a portrait of the Pope but declined when the Vatican demanded she wears a veil. In 1792, Vigée Le Brun traveled to Vienna, where she would stay for three years and painted diplomats. While there, she would receive the sorrowful news of Marie Antoinette’s execution. In the summer of 1795, Vigée Le Brun traveled to St. Petersburg, where she would remain for the next six years. She was welcomed by new clientele—luckily, all Russian nobility spoke French. At the time, Russia was known as the land of the new Renaissance, and Vigée Le Brun found inspiration in the recent Greco-Roman findings in Pompeii and Herculaneum.