Darya Arsenyeva came from a noble family, whose founder was reckoned to be Aslan Murza Chelibei who in the 14th century came to the court of Grand Prince Dmitry Donskoi from the Golden Horde and converted to Orthodoxy.
Darya was one of the retinue of Peter I's beloved sister Natalia and that is how she and Menshikov met. Their marriage, concluded in 1706, proved a happy one. They had seven children, but only three survived childhood: Alexander, Maria and Alexandra. After Menshikov's fall in 1727, Darya followed him into Siberian exile, but in May 1728 she died near Kazan before reaching Beriozov.
This portrait was found in the stocks of the State Russian Museum in St Petersburg, where it was considered a depiction of one of the female members of the Romanov House. Research, however, led to the subject being identified as Darya Menshikova.