Giovanina Pacini by Karl Briullov, 1831
GIOVANINA PACINI (1803-1875) was the eldest daughter of the Italian composer Giovanni Pacini and foster child of Countess Yuliya Pavlovna Samoylova. This beautiful portrait depicts the elder of the two foster children of Countess Iulia Pavlovna Samoilov, one of the richest women in the Russian Empire, a relative of Catherine the Great and Briullov’s lover for many years. Briullov was to paint Giovanina Pacini again, this time in a large oil painting, ‘The Rider’, which now hangs in the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
source: WikiCommons, Christie’s
Giovannina was born in 1825….so it’s her portrait in 1832? Impossible was a 7 years old girl!