The Infanta María Luisa of Bourbon and Saxony
1763. Pastel on paper.Not on display
Smiling with a direct, vivacious expression, the Infanta faces the viewer in this half-length portrait. She wears ermine robes cheerfully adorned with silk at the neck and a fur cap. A parrot perches on her right hand. Her facial features match those of the Infanta María Luisa of Bourbon, born in Naples in 1745 to Charles III and Mary Amalia of Saxony. In 1765, she married Leopold of Lorraine, and in 1790 she became the Grand Duchess of Tuscany. She later became Empress of Austria and died in Vienna in 1792.
This portrait must have been one of a series of likenesses painted around 1763, as the Infanta appears to be around eighteen or nineteen years old. The parrot was appreciated for its exoticism in the 18th century and is symbolically related to marriage, so this portrait may have been painted on the occasion of her marriage. Along with D07435, D07438, D07420, D07421 and D07422, this must be one of the portraits attributed to one of Tiepolo’s sons, mentioned in the 1794 Inventory of the New Palace in Madrid.
The Museo del Prado’s 1879 inventory does not identify the sitter in this work attributed to Domenico Tiepolo (Text drawn from Mena Marqués, M.: Catálogo de dibujos. VII. Dibujos italianos del siglo XVIII y del siglo XIX, Museo del Prado, 1990, p. 148).
