Leonilla Bariatinskaya

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Leonilla Baryatinskaya
Princess of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn
Portrait by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1849
Born(1816-05-09)9 May 1816
Moscow, Russian Empire
Died1 February 1918(1918-02-01) (aged 101)
Lausanne, Switzerland
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1834; died 1866)​
Issue
  • Fyodor
  • Antoinette
  • Ludwig
  • Alexander
Names
Leonilla Ivanovna Baryatinskaya
FatherPrince Ivan Baryatinsky
MotherCountess Marie Wilhelmine von Keller

Leonilla Ivanovna Baryatinskaya, Princess of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn (Russian: Леонилла Ивановна Барятинская; 9 May 1816 – 1 February 1918), was a Russian aristocrat who married Ludwig, Prince of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn. She was the subject of a number of portraits by Franz Xaver Winterhalter.

Life and family

Princess Leonilla Ivanovna Baryatinskaya was born on 9 May 1816 in Moscow. She was a daughter of Prince Ivan Ivanovich Baryatinsky (1772-1825), a member of one of the most influential families of the Russian nobility, and son of Princess Catherine of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck. Her mother was Countess Marie Wilhelmine von Keller (1792-1858), daughter of Count Christoph von Keller (1757-1827), a German diplomat, and Countess Amalie Louise zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Ludwigsburg (1771-1853), sister of Field Marshal Prince Peter zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg-Ludwigsburg.

Princess Leonilla Ivanovna on horseback, shows a bird to a little child and consoles him

On 23 October 1834, Leonilla married her cousin and one of the Tsar's

Radziwill (1809-1832), who bequeathed to him, on her early death, a large estate in central Europe and two children: Peter (who died without issue), and a daughter Marie, who married Prince Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Chancellor of the German Empire.[1]

Leonilla and Ludwig had four children:

Her beauty created an impression at the Russian court, but her husband fell from favor, perhaps because his liberal treatment of his serfs. They left Russia in 1848. Ludwig received, as a present from King

Tuileries in 1848. The princely family moved from country to country with the seasons, taking with them their children, pets, servants and tutors.[citation needed
]

Ludwig and Leonilla owned the former Baroque manor of the Counts of Boos-Waldeck below Sayn Castle reconstructed into a princely residence in Gothic Revival style. Their youngest son Alexander married Yvonne, daughter of the French Duke of Blacas, and inherited Sayn after the morganatic marriages of his older brothers Peter, Friedrich and Ludwig. After his wife's early death, he remarried and spent his life as Count of Hachenburg in the former family residences in Hachenburg and Friedewald in the Westerwald. Princess Leonilla operated a monarchist and Catholic salon and died in 1918 at the age of 101 at her villa of Mon Abri on Lake Geneva, Switzerland.[1] She was one of the longest-lived members of any royal family.[2]

Conversion to Roman Catholicism

On 24 June 1847, with the consent of her husband, Leonilla converted from Orthodoxy to Catholicism. His faith had always influenced her. Once she was widowed, she devoted even more to philanthropic works[3] and philanthropy.[4]

In 1876, at a time when the exercise of the Catholic faith was not yet fully authorized in the

canton of Vaud, she built on her property a private chapel, which became in 1912 the parish church of the Sacred Heart of Ouchy.[5] Her funeral was held in this church on 5 February 1918.[6]

Winterhalter's portraits

Getty Museum
, Los Angeles.

Known for her great beauty and intellect, Leonilla was the subject of a number of portraits by

Getty Museum in Los Angeles. It is signed and dated in 1843 in the pillar on the right. Winterhalter opted for a daring portrait, unusual in his oeuvre, both in conception and format.[1]

She appears reclined on a low Turkish sofa on a veranda overlooking a lush tropical landscape, possibly the Wittgenstein palace in the

Ingres's Grande Odalisque (1819). Leonilla is wearing a luxurious gown of ivory silk moiré, with a pink sash around her waist. A deep purple mantle wraps around her back and falls across her arms. She gazes languidly at the viewer while she toys with the large pearls around her neck in an indolent gesture, reinforcing the sensuality of the model. Winterhalter contrasted the sumptuous fabrics and vivid colors against the princess's alabaster flesh to heighten the sensuality of the pose, the model, and the luxuriant setting.[1] The oval portrait is also signed but not dated. Its dimensions are 97 × 79 cm, and it still belongs to the princess's descendants. It was painted years earlier, probably in 1836 in Rome, when Winterhalter met the Princess of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn and her husband and made portraits of both of them. Leonilla appears wearing a loose bodice, blue-lined with scarlet, over a white skirt.[7] She has a black lace scarf draped around her shoulders. She is wearing pearl earrings and necklace. She is seated, with one hand in her lap, the index finger of the other rest on her chin in a confident gesture.[7]

See also

Notes

  1. ^
    ISBN 0-8109-3964-9
    , pg. 185.
  2. ^ Coke, Hope (21 April 2021). "The top 10 longest-living royals in history". Tatler. Retrieved 4 August 2021.
  3. ^ Marcelle Dalloni, Au coeur du Valais chrétien: Les soeurs de St-Maurice en Valais (Fribourg: Imprimerie Saint-Paul, 1952), p. 103-104.
  4. ^ Gilles Simond, "May 6, 1916: the princess will celebrate its centenary in Lausanne", 24heures.ch. Accessed 6 May 2016.
  5. ^ "Histoire de la paroisse du Sacré-Cœur"
  6. ISBN 2884541276
    ), pp. 300-304.
  7. ^ a b Ormond & Blackett-Ord, Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the Courts of Europe, pg. 189.

References

External links

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