Elisabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun was widely known for flattering her sitters, and this canvas is no exception. However attractive Princess Belozersky may actually have been, the artist's decision to paint her with a faint smile on her moist lips, her dark curly hair slightly tousled, and her two-tone shawl (which matches the fringed head wrap) trailing to the side greatly enhances the subject's beauty.

Princess Anne Grigorieva Belosselsky Belozersky was the younger of two daughters of Gregory Vassilievitch Kozitsky, secretary of state to Catherine II. At the time this portrait was executed, during Vigée-Lebrun's St. Petersburg sojourn, the princess was twenty-six years old. A wealthy heiress, six years earlier she had married the prominent diplomat Prince Alexandre Mikhailovitch Belosselsky. The couple had three children and entertained in a home famous for its fashionable décor.

Nevertheless, the artist has chosen to downplay the trappings of her sitter's life, placing the princess before a plain brown background. She wears a simple, long-sleeved, high-waisted dress of the color and type favored by Vigée-Lebrun for both her own wardrobe and the costumes in which she dressed her female subjects. The princess wears very little jewelry, only a pair of gold and amber earrings and a necklace that is faintly visible beneath the diaphanous white scarf covering her throat. According to one scholar, Vigée-Lebrun has wound the princess's shawl around her hands-as though it were a muff-to indicate that she lives in a cold climate.