PORTRAIT OF THE DUCHESS OF PARMA AND HER DAUGHTER ISABELLE
Creator(s): Jean-Marc Nattier (Painter)
On view in: French Drawing Room
About this object
Jean-Marc Nattier succeeded as a fashionable portrait painter by naturally posing his sitters within a formal baroque composition. These skills helped the artist to obtain several commissions for portraits of Louis XV and his family. Nattier painted this portrait of the eldest daughter of Louis XV and her daughter while the duchess visited her father at Fontainebleau so he could meet young Isabelle. The duchess, née Louise Elizabeth, married the Infante Felipe, a Spanish Bourbon. Known until then as Madame Infante, in 1748 she persuaded her father to make her husband the Duke of Parma.
The double portrait is of the eldest daughter of Louis XV, Duchess of Parma and her young daughter Isabelle. They are shown in three-quarters length seated in a formal garden with a tree at the right and a terrace, balustrade and formal garden at the left. The duchess is dressed in a gray dress held at the waist with a girdle of pearls with a blue satin cloak draped around her. She has flowers in her powdered hair, holds a flower in her left hand, and extends a lily to her daughter with her right hand. Isabelle is dressed also in gray with flowers in her powdered hair and holds a violet cloak with flowers lying in it.
- Object name:
- PORTRAIT OF THE DUCHESS OF PARMA AND HER DAUGHTER ISABELLE
- Made from:
- Oil on canvas
- Made in:
- Paris, France
- Date made:
- 1750
- Size:
- 133.4 × 106 cm (52 1/2 × 41 3/4 in.)
Detailed information for this item
- Catalog number:
- 51.4
- Class:
- PAINTING
- Signature marks:
- SIGNATURE; DATE Nattier Pinxit 1750 [Lower right] LABELS Chenue / Emballeur / 5, Rue de la Terrasse Paris [printed in red] 2180 [added in pencil]; RT / RT [in ink on a label] [on back]
- Credit line:
- Bequest of Marjorie Merriweather Post, 1973