BERLIN — The last time Vogue profiled a prominent European female leader, Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, she agreed to be captured by Annie Leibovitz in a rainbow array of coats and her trademark leopard-print kitten heels.

But for the August 2017 issue, featuring another — perhaps the most — powerful woman in Europe, the likeness of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany was rendered not in a glossy shoot by Ms. Leibovitz, the star photographer, but in an oil painting in muted primary hues by the American artist Elizabeth Peyton.

As Kati Marton lays out in her profile of the 63-year-old German chancellor — made available to the author for a single question — Ms. Merkel is patently uninterested in the trappings of leadership in the modern, hypermedia age. She leaves tweeting to her spokesman and parcels out interviews based on her need to clarify a policy position.

It was not the first time that a United States publication has turned to an artist to capture the chancellor’s likeness. When Time magazine named her Person of the Year in 2015, editors there tapped the artist Colin Davidson to paint an oil portrait of Ms. Merkel that appeared on the cover.