Empress Euginie (1826-1920)

 

Born  Eugenia Maria  de Moontijo de Guzman, the daughter of a Spanish Grandee, she  married Napoleon  Ill in 1853.  A religious Catholic  ultramontane,  partisan  of  the  Pope,   her   personal  art  collection  was composed  of  imperial  portraits   by  Winterhalter,    Cabanel  and   Dedreux.  Her biographers state that  she  knew nothing at all about art  and  preferred interior decoration.

Franz Xavier Winterhalter, The Empress Eugenie Surrounded by her Ladies in Waiting (1855)