Photograph : Pierre-Louis Pierson (1822 - 1913)
Over Painting: (attributed to) Aquilin Schad
The Countess of Castiglione. The Sultana, 1865.

Vintage photograph enlarged and painted with gouache, mounted on cardboard.
Handwritten title and date in the hand of the Countess of Castiglione on the reverse.
45,3 x 29,7 cms

Date
Exact dates for photographs of the Countess of Castiglione are rare although the periods in which she was photographed are known. Pierre Apraxine designates 1861-67 for works such as The Sultana. However, The Sultana is unusual in being dated on the reverse by the Countess, 1865

Size
Whilst the majority of lifetime photographs of the Countess are extremely small, the most extensively over-painted works are generally larger. The enlarged size of The Sultana is consistent with two other works from this same period of the mid 1860s. All three were enlarged with the intention that they should be painted. These are listed as cat 45 and cat 46 in La Divine Comtesse Photographs of the Countess of Castiglione, 2000.

Labels and frame
Presented in its original Louis XIV style stucco frame, characteristic of late 19th and early 20th century.
"Ancienne maison Mayer & Pierson - Maison Ad. Braun & Cie - Braun & Cie, Succrs" on the reverse of the frame.
to Christian Kempf, the Braun specialist:
"The photo La Sultane is only known in the Colmar collections in the form of two contact prints, 7x9 cm approx. The original negative plates no longer exist.
This same toilette allowed for a very varied series of poses, probably during the same session at Louis Pierson's, all titled differently (the title is engraved directly on the plate): the toilette, the assassination, the reflection, the favourite, the slave, etc.
Pierre Apraxine has listed 11 poses.
I have consulted all the Braun corporate name vignettes that I know of. Yours corresponds well to the one used at the beginning of the 20th century, when the company name was changed in 1910 to Braun & Cie.
If The Sultana print is indeed an original from Pierson's time, then it is a new frame from the beginning of the 20th century, made by the Braun company in Paris. I can't explain otherwise this anachronism between an 1860s print and this post-1910 label."

Presumably the vintage painted print, annotated on the back by the Countess, remained with the Pierson studio and when his son-in-law, Adolphe Braun, succeeded Pierson, he took over the collection and thus this print. The photograph was most probably framed by the Braun studio around 1910 accounting for the label on the reverse of the frame.
Painting
The quality of painting is exceptional, suggesting it must have been done by one of the finest specialists of the days such as Aquilin Schad.

The condition is exceptional. Very few fully overpainted pictures of the Countess exist. The majority of painted images are small partially painted contact prints and through exposure to light there has been a differential fading and discoloration of the photograph and the over-painted gouache leading to a peculiar lack of integration. In many cases the photographic image is very pale and the gouache has lost adhesion or has discoloured. The Sultana appears not to have been displayed in daylight and to have been kept in a dark place and so is remarkably rich. It is also one of the most fully overpainted works, so much so, that there is virtually no evidence of its underlying photographic source and it reads completely as a painting.
known prints
There are a small number of contact prints. No other enlargements are known.
1.
La Divine Comtesse Photographs of the Countess of Castiglione, Yale, 2000.
Titled La Comtesse in robe de piquéor as Judith
The Metropolitan Museum has two contact prints, an unpainted version numbered in pencil 88 which they title Judith and an overpainted contact print of the image (12.4 x 8.8 cms) that is Illustrated pl.35 and discussed p.174 Relatively crudely painted, perhaps by the Countess herself, this appears to be a study for the, finished painted work. This appears to be corroborated by a small thick vertical ink line to the right of the Countess in the contact print which when compared to The Sultana suggests that this was where the image should be cropped since it corresponds to the slightly narrower composition of the enlarged painted photograph. The finished work is much more detailed and elaborate and even includes the addition of the Countess's monogram on the cushion in the lower left.
.
La Comtesse de Castiglione, Baudoin Lebon / La Difference, 2009
Identified as coming from a session including L'Assassinat
Illustrates an unpainted small contact print (10.5 x 7.5 cms) of the same source photograph. p.107

The negatives for other works in the series survive, but not for The Sultana.

The Metropolitan Museum catalogue records that The model is attempting, in front of the mirror and the photographer's lens, to strike ballet poses. She is emulating Princess de Metternich, who wore a tutu to dance a pas de deux with the Duke de Mouchy in a tableau vivant entitled The Greenroom at the Opéra performed before an invited audience at the Chateau de Compiegne in November 1863.

However, beneath this apparently charming subject lies something darker. Pictures of the Countess were often titled by the Countess but the titles are not always fixed. La Sultane comes from a session that generated several pictures in which the Countess wears the same costume, indicating that she is playing the same character in each of them - in some she is in ballet poses, in another she looks in a mirror, and in a culminating image she stands carrying a knife. As a result the group has been called The Assassin, which relates it to another work, Vengeance. The title for the album images in the collection of Metropolitan appear to identify this assassin being titled La Comtesse in robe de piquéor as Judith. Presumably this is a reference to the story of Judith and Holofernes in which Holofernes is captivated by Judith's beauty and she kills him. Might this be a reference to the Countess and her husband to whom she sent a copy of Vengeance, or to Countess and Napoleon III who had abandoned her. However, despite the iconography it is unclear where the Metropolitan got their title from.

The Countess of Castiglione
Virginia Oldoïni, who became Countess of Castiglione through her marriage in 1854, was described as "the most beautiful woman of her century". She has remained famous not only for having been the mistress of Emperor Napoleon III, the sultry courtesan at the heart of the social evenings and political intrigues of the European courts and Paris of the 1850s and 1860s, but also for her immense contribution to the art of photographic portraiture in the second half of the 19th century.

The portraits of the Castiglione created between 1856 and 1895 by Pierre-Louis Pierson, who was also the Emperor's official photographer, became the stuff of legend during what will be remembered as the longest collaboration in the history of portraiture between a photographer and his model.

Through the three periods retraced (1856-1858, 1861-1867 and 1893-1895), the complicity between the countess, who imagined the settings, and Pierson, a particularly gifted practitioner, generated a corpus of more than 400 images (the Mayer & Pierson collection is kept at the Musée Unterlinden in Colmar).

Among the images produced, the most intriguing and mysterious are undoubtedly the painted photographs, for which Mayer and Pierson were specialists and for which they used a solar chamber in order to obtain larger works. Often considered an eccentricity in photographic art, they reveal the extravagance of the Countess, both in her wounded narcissism and in her rejection of reality, creating through her various characters a false biography. In this respect, the self-portrait as obsessively practiced by the Castiglione precedes by almost a century contemporary artistic works on identity such as those of Claude Cahun, Pierre Molinier, Sophie Calle or Cindy Sherman.

In the painted photograph The Sultana, we find the influence of Second Empire fashion prints and dramatic art. This femme fatale with an expression of weariness, casualness, even smugness, seduction and contempt, strives to highlight the richness of her dresses, while supporting the narrative content of her portraits with the attitude of her gesture and the expressive power of her gaze. All these attentions and provocations earned her the admiration of Robert de Montesquiou, who worshipped the Countess by gathering a very important collection of her photographs.