Attribué à PRUD'HON Pierre-Paul (Cluny 1758-Paris 1823) The Virgin with joined hands. Oil on canvas (Important retractions of material in the background). Signed and dated on the left in the border of the blue coat P. P PRUD'HON 1811. 57 x 48 cm. Reprise of the composition (Canvas. 55 x 46 cm) " A Virgin's head" exhibited at the Salon of 1810 (n° 665). Jean Guiffrey, in his catalog L'oeuvre de P. - P. Prud'hon (Paris 1924) mentions several replicas, all almost of the same dimensions, of The Virgin with joined hands exhibited at the Salon of 1810 and acquired by the Empress Marie - Louise, before passing to Vienna in the gallery of Prince Alfred Montenuovo (1854 - 1927) : the one of the former collection of the Duke Alfred de Montebello (56 x 47 cm) that his wife had also received from the Empress Marie - Louise (Cf. n° 308 - 310, pp. 110 & 112) and the one kept in the Pushkin Museum (Moscow), dated 1811, like our version, and coming from the Youssoupov collection (Cf. La Peinture Française au Musée Pouchkine, n° 84 - Leningrad 1980). The preparatory drawing, in black stone and white highlights (24 x 17,8 cm) is kept in the Museum of Fine Arts in Dijon (Cf. Sylvain Laveissière, Prud'hon ou le rêve du bonheur ; catalog of the exhibition at the Grand Palais, in Paris, n° 148 P, p. 205 - RMN 1997).