Angelica Catalani (1782-1849) was a cantatrice célèbre (celebrated singer), as the inscription on the back of this miniature states. She was born in Senigallia in Italy and made her singing debut at the Fenice theatre in Venice in 1795. She performed across Europe, visiting England in 1806 and staying until 1813. She was hugely popular with the British public, partly because of her dislike of Napoleon who had tried, but failed, to persuade her to stay in Paris, offering her an enormous sum of money. She sang at the Drury Lane theatre, the King’s theatre and Covent Garden theatre, and in 1807 alone her income was £16,700 – a huge amount. Two of her most popular songs, for which she was paid £200 a time, were God Save the King and Rule Brittania. She also played Susanna in the first English performance of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. Her last public performance was at La Scala in Milan in 1832 and she retired to her villa outside Florence and taught singing, free of charge. She fled from an outbreak of cholera to Paris, but contracted the disease and died there in 1849.

André-Léon Larue, also known as Mansion (1785 - after1834), was born in Nancy. He was the son of Jaques Larue, a portrait painter, and a pupil of Jean-Baptiste Isabey. He exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1808 to 1834 and at the Royal Academy in 1829 and 1831. He was the author of Letters on the Art of Miniature Painting (1822).

The miniature is signed and dated on the right: Mansion 1815, and inscribed on the backing paper in ink: Made Catalani, / cantatrice célèbre. / Peinte par Mansion—1815. An indecipherable inscription on the vellum backing (perhaps Leon Larue 24 / 1815) is followed by a dealer’s number: No. 2660.C.105.