Lot 82: Domenico Bossi (Trieste 1765 - Munich 1853)

A Lady, wearing décolleté pale blue dress with white lace trim, blue sash wound around her body and over her left shoulder, cream ruff and gauze across her chest
signed on obverse D: Bossi Pinxit 1805, gilt-metal mount
Oval, 87mm. (3 7/16ins.) high

S.N.P.G., 2000-2003

Bossi's Russian period coincides with his artistic maturity, during which he perfected his very individual soft sfumato sculptural style. In St Petersburg he was patronised by the Imperial family and became a court painter. A fine example of Bossi's court portraiture is a miniature of Emperor Alexander I set in a gold snuff box by Keibel, presented to Lord Granville Leveson Gower, later Lord Granville (now in the Gilbert Collection, London (inv. 1966.535 (GB187)). The present miniature is an exemplary example of the effectiveness of Bossi's technique to describe textures of fabric and skin and at the same time to envelop the sitter in an aura of restrained allure.