Maria Feodorovna (Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg)
Maria Feodorovna became Empress of Russia as the second wife of Emperor Paul I. She founded the Office of the Institutions of Empress Maria.
Portrait by Vigee-Le Brun, 1790s
Young Sophie Dorothea in 1770.
Grumbkow's Palace in Szczecin, where Maria Feodorovna was born.
Portrait of Maria Feodorovna by Alexander Roslin.
Paul I was Emperor of Russia from 1796 until his 1801 assassination. Paul remained overshadowed by his mother for most of his life. He adopted the laws of succession to the Russian throne—rules that lasted until the end of the Romanov dynasty and of the Russian Empire. He also intervened in the French Revolutionary Wars and toward the end of his reign, added Kartli and Kakheti in Eastern Georgia into the empire, which was confirmed by his son and successor Alexander I.
Natalia Alexeievna by Alexander Roslin 1776
Maria Feodorovna, portrait by Alexander Roslin
Paul I in the early 1790s
A statue of Emperor Paul in front of the Pavlovsk Palace