AFTER MARTIN VAN MEYTENS THE YOUNGER (SWEDISH-AUSTRIAN, 1695-1770)

The present miniature derives from a large-scale painting by Martin van Meytens the Younger circa 1725, commemorating the birth of the sitter's second child, Henry Benedict Stuart. It was a pair to one of her husband, James Francis Edward Stuart, The Old Pretender, and the portraits were given as mutual presents, each to be hung in the other's apartment in the Palazzo Muti. The Meytens painting became her official portrait and was copied both on a large and small scale (see exhibition catalogue by E. Corp, The King over the Water. Portraits of the Stuarts in Exile after 1689, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, 2001, pp. 63-64).