Marie-Françoise Constance Mayer La Martinière was a French painter of portraits, allegorical subjects, miniatures and genre works. She had "a brilliant but bitter career."
Self-Portrait. Oil on canvas. Bibliothèque Marmottan
Self-Portrait with Artist's Father: He Points to a Bust of Raphael, Inviting Her to Take This Celebrated Painter as a Model, oil on canvas, 1801, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
Sophie Fanny Lordon
Amable Tastu, oil on canvas, Musée de Metz, France
A portrait miniature is a miniature portrait painting, usually executed in gouache, watercolor, or enamel. Portrait miniatures developed out of the techniques of the miniatures in illuminated manuscripts, and were popular among 16th-century elites, mainly in England and France, and spread across the rest of Europe from the middle of the 18th century, remaining highly popular until the development of daguerreotypes and photography in the mid-19th century. They were usually intimate gifts given within the family, or by hopeful males in courtship, but some rulers, such as James I of England, gave large numbers as diplomatic or political gifts. They were especially likely to be painted when a family member was going to be absent for significant periods, whether a husband or son going to war or emigrating, or a daughter getting married.
A display case with 18th-century portrait miniatures at the National Museum in Warsaw.
Portrait Miniature of Margaret Roper by Hans Holbein the Younger, c. 1535–36
Christian Horneman's miniature portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven (1802).
The future Duke of Wellington in 1808, by Richard Cosway.