French School by 1790, Studio of Madame Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842)

Portrait of Marie Caroline of Austria, Queen of Naples and Sicily (1752-1814)
Oil on panel: 36 x 27 cm
In a Louis XVI carved and gilded wooden frame:

Archduchess Marie Caroline of Habsburg Lorraine was born on August 13, 1752, in Schönbrunn, the thirteenth child of Francis I of Lorraine, Holy Roman Emperor, and Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, Queen of Bohemia and Hungary. She married King Ferdinand IV of Naples in 1768. Marie Caroline was the elder sister of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, and had a significant lineage within the royal houses of Bourbon Sicily, Austria, and Orléans.

A controversial historical figure, Marie Caroline was much maligned. She did not confine herself to her role as queen consort but exerted political influence over her husband. A fierce opponent of the Revolution, she dared to defy her father-in-law Charles III of Spain and Napoleon. She endured multiple exiles and died in Vienna just before the Congress that would restore her husband to the throne of the Two Sicilies.

Among the numerous portraits of the Queen of Naples, the one painted by Madame Vigée Le Brun is undoubtedly the most beautiful. A royal and splendid effigy, our painting is a small-format repetition, a "recordo," of the portrait painted in Naples in 1791 by Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun. At the time, Marie Antoinette’s favored portraitist had fled France and the Revolution, embarking on a long exile across Europe, which would eventually take her to Russia. After an initial eight-month stay in Rome, she settled in Naples in the spring of 1790, where, through Baron de Talleyrand, the French ambassador, the Queen of Naples commissioned portraits of her children: two of her daughters to be married, Princesses Marie Thérèse and Louise, as well as Prince Royal François and young Princess Marie Christine. Madame Vigée Le Brun returned to Naples in the winter of 1791 to paint this official portrait of the queen.

Unfortunately, this painting no longer exists, having been destroyed in a fire in 1940. It is now only known through a black-and-white photograph and through paintings like ours, which allow us to appreciate its colors. The composition can be seen as a tribute to the Queen of France, who was imprisoned in the Tuileries after the failed escape to Varennes. This painting echoes, with a tighter framing, the very regal portrait of Marie Antoinette in a blue velvet dress, painted a few years earlier in 1788. In this portrait of the Queen of Naples, Vigée Le Brun highlights the familial connection between the two queens, not only by the resemblance of the sitter to her younger sister, but by composing the painting with a "repeated attire" while changing the colors. The same seated pose, holding a book in her right hand and resting her left arm on a cushion, is present. The Queen of Naples wears a blue velvet gown cinched at the waist over a red satin skirt, while her sister, the Queen of France, wore white satin. Both have similar hairstyles, satin and gauze turbans adorned with matching ostrich feathers, the same pearl jewelry, and a palatial backdrop featuring a column on the left.
The 1788 portrait of Marie Antoinette itself had precedents in Jean-Marc Nattier's paintings, such as his portrait of Madame Adélaïde in a blue velvet gown holding a musical score (1758) or his portrait of Queen Marie Leczynska reading the Bible (1748), works that Vigée Le Brun knew well and from which she drew inspiration.


Among the known versions of our portrait of the Queen of Naples is a set of smaller versions, identical in format to ours, likely executed for the queen’s family, possibly her children, as they have been passed down through the model's descendants.
- The Condé Museum in Chantilly houses a similar portrait of the same dimensions, originating from the collections of one of the queen’s daughters, Princess Marie-Amélie of Bourbon Sicily, Duchess of Orléans, and later Queen of the French (1782-1866).
- A second version, identical to ours in size and also painted on a panel, came from another daughter of the queen, Princess Maria Cristina of Bourbon, Duchess of Genoa, later Queen of Sardinia (1779-1849), and was sold in Munich in 2014.
- A third version, also identical to ours in size and painted on a panel, was part of Prince Al-Thani’s collection at the Hôtel Lambert.


Our portrait, finely executed on a panel, is therefore the fourth known example of these "recordos" of the Naples painting. Joseph Baillio mentions another small-format replica on panel of a "Neapolitan" portrait by Madame Vigée Le Brun, that of Prince Royal François, which was part of the sale of Princess de Faucigny Lucinge's collection in 1924.