01 Paintings, PORTRAIT OF A LADY, of the 18th & 19th C., with Footnotes. #24

Richard Avedon, (May 15, 1923 – October 1, 2004)

Veruschka von Lehndorff, 1966

Countess Vera von Lehndorff-Steinort (born 14 May 1939), also known as Veruschka von Lehndorff, is a German model, actress, and artist who was popular during the 1960s. She is known professionally as Veruschka.

Veruschka was born Vera Gottliebe Anna Gräfin von Lehndorff-Steinort on 14 May 1939, in Königsberg, East Prussia, now known as Kaliningrad, Russia. She grew up at Steinort, an estate in East Prussia, which had been in her family for centuries. Her mother was Countess Gottliebe von Kalnein (b. 1913). Her father was a German aristocrat and army reserve officer who became a key member of the German Resistance. When Veruschka was five years old, her father was executed for allegedly attempting to assassinate Adolf Hitler in the 20 July Plot. After his death, the remaining family members spent their times in labor camps until the end of World War II. By the end of the war, her family was left homeless. As a young girl, she attended 13 schools.

She studied art in Hamburg and then moved to Florence, where she was discovered at age 20 by the photographer Ugo Mulas and became a full-time model. In 1961 she moved to New York City, but soon returned to Munich. She had also garnered attention when she made a brief five-minute appearance in the 1966 cult film Blow Up by Michelangelo Antonioni. Veruschka appeared on the cover of Life magazine's August 1967 issue and various times on all four major Vogue magazines' (American, Italian, French and British) covers throughout the 1960s.


She once worked with Salvador Dalí and photographer Peter Beard, who took her to Kenya. At her peak, she earned as much as $10,000 a day. In 1975, however, she departed from the fashion industry due to disagreements with Grace Mirabella, the newly appointed editor-in-chief of Vogue. In a 1999 interview, Veruschka said about their disagreements, "She wanted me to be bourgeois, and I didn't want to be that. More on Veruschka von Lehndorff


Richard Avedon (May 15, 1923 – October 1, 2004) was an American fashion and portrait photographer. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century".

Although Richard Avedon’s celebrated fashion photographs have graced the pages of Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, and Life, the artist primarily referred to himself as a portrait photographer. Avedon’s fashion shots are profoundly dramatic and dynamic, often capturing the model in motion. Along with his own acquaintances and various ordinary people, Avedon took photographs of celebrities, politicians, and other public figures ranging from Bertrand Russell to Marilyn Monroe. In both his commercial assignments and his portrait work, Avedon’s meticulous approach and penetrating gaze sought to capture the essence of each unique subject and moment in time. More on Richard Avedon

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