Portrait of Countess Antonietta Negroni Prati Morosini as a Child

Hayez decided to use some photographs of the countess for this portrait, to avoid long poses. Despite the reassuring closeness of the little girl's mother in the photos used by the artist, the expression of the little countess revealed a sense of discomfort and bewilderment that Hayez decided to preserve in his portrait. Thus he gave to the painting an unconventional realistic freshness compared with the conventional canons of his time for child portraiture. The child is holding several flowers and one of them lies in the floor. Behind her there is a vase with a large amount of flowers, which was not very appreciated by the critics back then.^[2]

The painting was the subject of a 300 lire Poste Italiane stamp in 1982 as part of a series on Italian art.^[3]