Miniature signed and dated in the folds of the curtain: Jacques 1812, identified inside the medallion: portrait of Émilie Louise de Beauharnais, countess of Lavalette ( 1781-1855 ).

Member of the House Beauharnais, Émilie was a personality of the Consulate and  Empire. At the same time the cousin of Hortense (Queen de Hollande), Eugène (King of Italy) and of Stéphanie de Beauharnais (grand duchess of Bade). Niece by alliance of Empress Joséphine, Émilie de Beauharnais spent several years in Madame Campan's boarding school. During the first Empire, Émilie becomes following then lady-in-waiting of Empress Joséphine. On April 22nd, 1798, she married at the instigation of Napoleon Bonaparte, Antoine Marie Chamans ( 1769-1830 ), future count de Lavalette who was thus thanked for his service to the first consul during the Italian Campaign.

At the Restoration, Antoine Chamans is sentenced to death for having supported Napoleon but  Émilie imagines and organizes her husband’s escape. Visiting him in his prison, she dressed him in her own wife’s clothes and took his place .In prison for a month for her audacity, she was then released but refused to join her husband in exile. Reunited with her husband in 1822, she died at the beginning of the second Empire. It is buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery (36th division).