Chassériau, a precocious student of Ingres, sought to rival his former master's supremacy in portraiture upon his arrival in Rome. This three-quarter-length portrait of the wife of a powerful French diplomat follows Ingres' formula, yet the nearly monochromatic rendering of the figure and melancholic mood of the scene subvert his approach. Above all, Chassériau abandoned Ingres' detailed naturalism in favor of a stylized, almost antinatural depiction of sitter and setting. When this portrait was exhibited at the 1841 Salon in Paris, critics loyal to Ingres faulted the pallor of the skin and the expressive elongation of the head—qualities that signal the originality of Chassériau's approach.

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