Portrait of Grand Duchess Alexandra Pavlovna as a Child by Johann Baptist Lampi

Alexandra Pavlovna, Grand Duchess, Palatina of Hungary, the daughter of Emperor Paul I and his wife Maria Fedorovna, was born in St. Petersburg. July 29, 1783, was engaged to the King of Sweden, Gustav IV Adolf, but this marriage was upset, on the very day of the betrothal, because of the awkwardness of the Russian diplomats who had negotiated the details of the marriage contract and, mainly, because of the refusal of the Russian court to Grand Princess changed faith.

In 1799, she married the Austrian Archduke Joseph; during her short marriage suffered a lot of frustration from the Austrian court; died from puerperal fever March 4, 1801. On her grave, in Ofen, a dependency of Emperor Alexander I built an Orthodox church. In 1796, when the Grand Duchess was 13 years old, she placed two translations from French in the magazine “Muses”: “Vivacity and Benefit of One Peasant” and “Duty of Mankind”.