SAXON SCHOOL, CIRCA 1775

The sitter was the daughter of Frederick Michael, Count Palatine of Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld (1724–1767) and his wife Countess Palatine Maria Francisca of Sulzbach (1724–1794). In 1769 she married the Saxon Elector Frederick Augustus III (1750–1827). In 1806, the couple became the first King and Queen of Saxony. The following year, Napoleon I made them Duke and Duchess of Warsaw, a newly created principality in Poland. They had four children, but only their daughter, Princess Maria Augusta of Saxony, survived to adulthood.
A portrait of the sitter in similar fur-trimmed dress, then at Weesenstein Castle, is described in J. L. Sponsel, Fürsten-Bildnisse aus den Hause Wettin, Dresden, 1906, p. 80, no. 175, illustrated pl. 74.