Ildefons Curiger sculpted this wax portrait of a woman in a black dress with a wide lace collar and full sleeves. Curiger was a Swiss artist from a family of wax modelers. He trained in Vienna, and moved between there and Zurich and Einsiedeln, Switzerland, throughout his career.

This wax highlights the elaborate hairstyles which became popular in Europe from the 1820s through the mid-1830s. It renders the sitter’s hair in remarkable detail, from the sausage curls arranged across the forehead to the braid sweeping around the high chignon at back. These hairstyles were fanciful reinterpretations of the curled hairstyles of the 1600s.