Comte de Nesselrode
8 October 1861

Volume 5, page 125, sitting number 5996.

[Identified as 'Comte de Nesselrode' in the Silvy daybooks, this is probably a close relative of the Russian-German diplomat Karl Robert Reichsgraf von Nesselrode-Ehreshoven, also known as Charles de Nesselrode, who for forty years guided Russian foreign policy. The likeliest candidate for a fuller identification is his son, Count Dmitrij Karlovitsj Nesselrode, but elsewhere on the Internet there is a portrait of him taken in Paris by Disdéri around the same time as this Silvy portrait and the two sitters are clearly not the same man.]

[An inked inscription in the lower margin reads ‘A gamekeeper of Norman joust,’ presumably the sitter's humorous reference to the armour Silvy placed as props in this portrait.]