Antonia (1797-1862) was the daughter of Francis Joseph, Prince of Kohary. In 1816, she married Ferdinand, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, becoming an aunt of both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Queen Victoria knew her as ‘Aunt Tony’. When the duchess died in 1862, Leopold I, King of the Belgians, wrote to Queen Victoria: ‘I was grieved to hear that poor Tony had closed her lonely existence. The life she led was truly dull enough but her warm heart caused her to be much interested in every thing connected with the family. She had been a most devoted wife to your Uncle, always ready for every sacrifice that should have been wished – a very honest and generous character’.

There is some uncertainty about her identity as she is depicted here with blue eyes, not brown eyes as in another portrait of her in the Royal Collection by Guglielmo Faija after Moritz Michael Daffinger (RCIN 420796), painted in 1851.

Karl Christian Philipp von Reichel (b. 1788) was working with his brother Jakob in St Petersburg from around 1800 to 1850.

The miniature is signed and dated on the lower right: Reichel 1813, and faintly inscribed on the backing paper in pencil: Coburg Cohari.