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This impressive equestrian portrait is one of the most emblematic works in the Musée Lorrain. It glorifies the spirit of resistance of Alberte-Barbe d'Ernecourt (1606-1660), wife of Jean-Jacques de Haraucourt, lord of Saint-Baslemont. The couple lived at the Château de Neuville-en-Verdunois until Haraucourt left for war alongside the duke of Lorraine, Charles IV, in 1632.

After the Thirty Years' War spread throughout Europe, Madame de Saint-Baslemont trained the inhabitants of the surrounding villages to fight, and opposed the looting and abuse carried out by the armies and bands of mercenaries that passed through the Neuville region. Claude Deruet depicts these episodes in the form of sketches in the background of his painting: chasing cattle rustlers, freeing hostages, rescuing soldiers in danger. Through her courage, Madame de Saint-Baslemont warded off danger and transformed her fiefdom into a place of relative tranquillity.

A very pious woman, the "Christian Amazon" also sheltered on her land the statuette of the Virgin Mary kept in the chapel of Notre-Dame de Benoîte-Vaux, a place of pilgrimage a few kilometres from Neuville. It was under her protection that Deruet placed his heroine here. Committed to the French armies, Madame de Saint-Baslemont, whom Louis XIII is said to have offered the command of a company, became increasingly famous from the mid-1640s onwards. However, the conditions under which our portrait was commissioned - a version of which can be seen in 1653 in the ducal palace in Nancy, among the possessions of the French marshal Henri de La Ferté Senneterre - remain a mystery. It is a particularly daring work for its time: the artist paints a woman using a format and posture usually reserved for portraits of men. From this point of view, in the 17th century, only the portrait of Christine of Sweden painted by Sébastien Bourdon in 1653 can be compared with it.