Empress Cixi is a large-format portrait in profile, acrylic on dibond (an aluminium composite panel), 108 x 108 cm including frame. The subject is one of the most powerful women in recorded history: Empress Dowager Cixi, who ruled China for nearly half a century from 1861 until her death in 1908, rising from low-ranking imperial concubine to effective sovereign of the world's most populous empire. Muse paints her in gold ceremonial regalia and a jewelled headdress against a ground that moves from near-black through slate blue to warm ochre, the ornamental detail carried entirely by the knife: loaded amber and gold strokes for the headdress, single dragged lines for the jewellery, and close-set pale planes for the face with a sweep of red at the lips.

It is the most ornate painting in Muse's recent work, and the most historically specific. Where her other portraits explore the interior lives of unnamed women, Empress Cixi names its subject directly and asks a different question: what does female power look like when it is absolute? The face gives nothing away. The regalia gives everything.

This work has been sold. To enquire about similar available works by Zara Muse, contact Eclectic Gallery, Fitzrovia, London.