Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun
(French, 1755-1842).


Madame Grassini in the Role of Zaire (1805).
Oil on canvas.
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen.

Depicts Giuseppa Grassini as Zaire, in the title-role of Peter von Winter’s opera.

Wears a red tunic without sleeves, over a dress of muslin flowered with roses, and a waistband with gold buckles.

Grassini, a noted Italian opera singer of the late 18th-early 19th centuries, was the mistress of Napoleon Bonaparte and of his enemy, the Duke of Wellington.



.