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archduchessofnowhere · 1 year

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So I was looking for pictures of archduchess Sophie in Wikimedia, as one does, and I stumbled with the portrait in the left. This portrait immediately seemed VERY familiar to me - and it didn't took me long to realize why: it's a different version of a portrait of Ludovika of Bavaria, Empress Elisabeth's mother.

Although it's in Sophie's Wikimedia page, this portrait was first posted in weber-gesamtausgabe.de, a website about composer Carl Maria von Weber, as a portrait Princess Maria Luisa Carlota of Bourbon-Parma, daughter of King Luis I of Etruria and Infanta Maria Luisa of Spain, who later married Prince Maximilian of Saxony.

The first thing that I thought is that the Weber website simply misidentified the sitter, but I decided to keep looking further. The website sourced the image as coming from Fürsten-Bildnisse aus dem Hause Wettin, by Jean Louis Sponsel, published in Dresden in 1906. I crossed my fingers, googled it and guess what: the whole book is available for free in the Saxon State and University Library.

It didn't took me long to find the picture in question:

The text reads as it follows:

Luise, second wife of Prince Max, 1802-1857. daughter of King Louis of Etruria, Duke of Lucca, married, 1825.

Carl Vogel von Vogelstein? c. 1535 [a typo, the author likely meant 1835]

Half-length portrait without hands from the front, head and gaze turned a little to the right, in front of a light grey background. The cherry-red dress is cut to the shoulders. The neckline is gathered in several cross folds in the middle and at the shoulders, the sleeves are widely puffed out, the narrow waist is held in place by a wide belt band with a long rectangular silver buckle. A narrow lace insert at the neckline. In the centre a jewel decorated with rubies and hanging pearls, around the bare neck a three-row pearl necklace, in the ears diamond earrings with hanging pearls. The regular, red-cheeked, youthful face has been given a special adornment by the thick chestnut-brown hair, which is puffed up above the ears in short ringlets and over the middle of the head is laid together in dense braids to form a crown. Broad forehead, large deep-set eyes, narrow lips, short chin, narrow slightly flushed cheeks. A drawing by Carl Vogel von Vogelstein depicting the princess in approximately the same manner bears the date 1835. A life-size marble bust by F. Pozzi made in Rome in 1826 in the City Museum.

The colors described match with the Ludovika portrait, so to me at least there is almost no doubt of it being the same. But that left with a bigger question: who is the sitter then?

Short answer, I have no idea. I'm no art historian, and I can't go to the Schloss Dresden to check if they still have this portrait somewhere in their collection. What I can do is speculate with the little information that I have, so I decided to do just that.

Here we have a close up of an engraving of Luisa Carlota with no date (left), the Dresden portrait with the mysterious sitter (middle), and a close up of a painting of Luisa Carlota by Vogel - likely the one referenced in Sponsel's book, I couldn't find any other -, dated 1834 (right):

And here we have a close up of a miniature of Ludovika (left), the Dresden portrait (middle), and a close up of Ludovika's engagement portrait by Stieler (right):

Perhaps I'm being biased, but I can see a strong resemblance between the Dresden portrait and the two portraits of Ludovika. I can't really see much similarities with the two images of Luisa (though to be fair, the engraving and the Vogel portrait don't look super similar either, and both are confirmed pictures of her). To me, the detail that makes me think that the Dresden portrait is indeed Ludovika is the eye color. Luisa seems to have brown eyes in the Vogel portrait. Ludovika has blue eyes in both of her portraits. The same eye color that the woman in the red dress identified as Ludovika has - which is likely also the eye color of the Dresden portrait's sitter.

Lastly, here is a picture of the portrait with the frame, in which the inscription identifying Ludovika can be seen:

This is all I could find on the subject. If I learn anything more I'll tell you!

#i am once again trying to identify a portrait #ludovika of bavaria duchess in bavaria #luisa carlota of bourbon-parma princess of saxony #art

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archduchessofnowhere · 5 months

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Hey do you remember how a million years ago I came across a portrait in Wikimedia labeled as being Princess Luisa Carlota of Bourbon that I believe is actually Ludovika of Bavaria? Well back when I was looking into that I needed to know the eye color of Luisa, so I searched for other portraits of her and in all she had brown eyes, except for this one in Wikimedia:

This miniature was made by Pietro Nocchi in 1823. The source of the picture was the auction website Cambi, where the painting was auctioned in 2015. This is the description of the item (automatic translation from Italian, emphasis by me):

Famous painter from Lucca, Pietro Nocchi worked as a portraitist for Elisa Baciocchi and her court; from 1812 he directed the Institute of Fine Arts of Lucca. With the Restoration he continued his activity for the Bourbons, both in large and small formats. Maria Luisa Carlota of Bourbon (Barcelona, 1802 – Rome, 1857), daughter of Prince Ludovico I of Bourbon and the infanta Maria Luisa of Bourbon-Spain, is portrayed here at the time of her marriage to Duke Maximilian of Saxony, which took place on 15 October 1825 by proxy and on 7 November in person. An engraving published by Comandini (L’Italia nei Cento anni del secolo XIX, Milan 1900-1901, p. 109) dated September 1825 and derived from this important portrait bears the inscription: “P. Nocchi made from life; R. Marsili lit.”. Another precious miniature signed and dated “Pietro Nocchi, 1818”, which portrays his mother, Maria Luisa di Borbone (1782-1824), Duchess of Lucca, is preserved in the Sinigaglia collection at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan, while a small portrait of Carlo Ludovico, Duke of Lucca (1799-1883), initialed “P.N.” it is included in the Ceci collection exhibited in the Royal Palace of Pisa.

I tried my look and searched for L’Italia nei Cento anni del secolo XIXI on the Archive, which thankfully came forward. Here is the engraving:

That's not... that's just not the same picture. The engraving doesn't look even remotely similar to the miniature. Just in case I went through the whole year of 1825 page by page, and I could not find any other image of Luisa. So this is must be the picture the auction site is referencing. Which again, bares no actual resemblance to the miniature they sold as being Luisa: not the hairstyle, not the dress, not the jewelry, not the sitter's pose, not anything. Also the engraving is clearly not even from the time of her marriage, since those giant sleeves only became fashionable in the 1830s.

Does this means the girl in the miniature isn't Luisa? I don't know for sure, but I really hope the auction site didn't base their identification on the engraving alone, because in that case...

#i was tidying up (?) my computer and i came across these pictures - i completely forgot i had even search this #maybe i should've studied art history because why do i keep stumbling with these misidentified portraits lol #i did not even tell you of the obvious 1800s painting a museum from luján has identified as being from the 1780s #THAT'S AN EMPIRE DRESS STOP SAYING IT'S FROM 1783 AAAAAH #luisa carlota of bourbon-parma princess of saxony #artist: pietro nocchi

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