Portrait of Princess Pauline de Metternich

French artist Edgar Degas painted this portrait of Princess Pauline de Metternich around 1860 without ever meeting his subject in person. Instead, he worked from a visiting card photograph of the Princess and her husband taken around 1867. This makes it one of the earliest painted portraits based directly on a photograph.

Princess Pauline Sander (1836–1921) was married to Prince Richard Metternich, the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador at Napoleon III's court from 1860 to 1871. Known as the "ambassadress of pleasure," she was a glamorous figure in Parisian high society. She pioneered new fashions, including the crinoline, and had already been painted by society portraitist Franz Xaver Winterhalter.

Degas made no attempt to disguise the portrait's photographic origins. In the original image, the Princess stood alongside her husband with her left arm entwined in his. Degas removed the Prince entirely, along with her left arm. The result focuses attention solely on the Princess against a flat mustard-yellow background.

Two colors dominate: variations of Naples yellow with a greenish tinge for the wallpaper, and gray-black for the dress and hair. The National Gallery in London acquired this portrait in 1918 from the Degas studio sale. It measures just 40 by 28.8 centimeters.