The Infante Don Gabriel of Bourbon
1763. Pastel on paper.Not on display
Turned halfway to the left, the sitter looks out at the viewer in this half-length portrait. He holds his hat in his left hand and, in his gloved right hand, the other glove. The insignias of the Golden Fleece and the Order of Saint Gennaro hang on his chest. F. J. Sánchez Cantón quotes a document from January 10, 1763, that expressly mentions Lorenzo Tiepolo as painting a portrait of the Infante Gabriel that year, along with one of his brother, Carlos, Prince of Asturias. The Infante Gabriel, born in Naples in 1752, was eleven years old in 1763, and that is his apparent age in the present likeness. This work was attributed to Domenico Tiepolo or the French School in the Museo del Prado’s 1857 inventory, but J. Ezquerra del Bayo correctly assigned it to Lorenzo and identified it as the Infante Gabriel, which was accepted by M. Precerutti-Garberi. It is unquestionably one of the most delicate and vivid of the entire series, as the artist conveys the fine sensitivity and intelligence of don Gabriel, the most cultivated of Charles II’s children.
Along with D07435, D07428, D07438, D07420 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 (Text drawn from Mena Marqués, M.: Catálogo de dibujos. VII. Dibujos italianos del siglo XVIII y del siglo XIX, Museo del Prado, 1990, p. 149).