Antonio David (1704-1788), Portrait of Princess Maria Clementina Sobieska (1702-1735)

Antonio David (1704-1788)
Portrait of Maria Clementina Sobieska (1702-1735)
Oil on canvas
41 x 32 1/2 in.
c.1719

Princess Maria Clementina Sobieska was a daughter of James Louis Sobieski, son of John III, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. One of the wealthiest heiresses in Europe, Maria Clementina’s hand was highly prized and her marriage to James Francis Edward Stuart, de jure King James III of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1719 was a coup for the Jacobite cause. James’s father, James VII and II, was exiled in the purportedly ‘Glorious’ Revolution of 1688-9 and his exiled heir ‘James III’ inherited his legitimist and divine claims to rule. He would also inherit the exiled British court, which was first based at St Germain-en-Laye in France under the aegis of Louis XIV and subsequently the papal Palazzo Muti in Rome 1718. To the alarm of many Jacobites by 1718 James had reached the age of thirty without wife or heir and, conceding, James sent an envoy to scour Europe, with particular view to the princesses of Poland, for an eligible bride. Maria Clementina Sobieska was the goddaughter of the pope and had a sizable dowry, but she also had glowing eyes, beauty, a pious Catholic faith and a professed keenness to restore the Stuarts. On receiving these reports, James proposed at once and found his proposal accepted. However, the ruling Hanoverian regime in Britain, aware of the potential threat of a revived Stuart dynasty, inveigled upon the Holy Roman Emperor to imprison Maria Clementina while crossing Europe for the nuptials. Her subsequent escape was lionised across Europe and only served to undermine the Hanoverians. It also served to encourage the Jacobite conviction that providence would, in the end, favour the divine right of kings. Arriving in Rome in 1719, Maria Clementina finally married James Francis Edward Stuart and all eyes were turned on the new queen.

It would be the principal painter of the Jacobite court, Antonio David, to be commissioned by James III for this portrait. The resultant image of the new queen would celebrate their new marriage, meet international demand, and advertise the vitality of the Stuart cause. David was first commissioned by James III for his own portrait in 1717, and the King was impressed both by his talent and ability to faithfully paint multiple versions. David was thus given a royal warrant in 1718 making him the king’s official painter, a pre-eminence he would enjoy until his death in 1737. The ability to create excellent versions such as this picture was an essential attribute of any successful court painter, however this skill was particularly important to the Jacobites who depended upon them to familiarise their subjects with the likenesses of their estranged rulers. Maria Clementina was first painted in Rome by Francesco Trevisani (1659-1746) so that a portrait might be sent to an eager James III in Spain yet to meet his wife by proxy. However, Trevisani painted too slowly, and there being little chance he could produce another version to be engraved in Paris to satisfy demand for her image, David was chosen as the more suitable candidate [1]. Only having recently begun working for the Stuart court, his success herein would bind the painter irrevocably to Jacobite patronage. David’s alternative portrait of Maria Clementina was three-quarter-length and portrayed her holding her right hand delicately in the air. Her hair is strewn with pearls decorated with a feather. Laden with royal iconography, the new queen wears an ermine lined robe and rests her left hand upon a table on which a closed imperial crown is prominently placed. The resultant three-quarter-length picture may therefore be deemed her first state portrait and it was immediately despatched to Paris to be engraved by Drevet. The resultant engraving was, as Richard Sharp has established, correctly attributed to Antonio David [2]. Only three versions survive, this portrait and those at Lambeth Palace and Chiddingstone Castle. Such was the success of the new image that David was subsequently commissioned to paint more the following year, likely smaller half-length bust copies for which he would be paid ten pistoles (166l. 5s. 0d.) for ten versions. These remove the subject’s forearms from the picture plane as well as the crown or relocate it upon a shelf above her right shoulder [3]. It may be assumed that David painted more diminutive versions due to economy, but perhaps also the reduced risk of their being confiscated when imported into Britain (the absence of regalia in some, as in other Jacobite court portraits, is also indicative of this).

This successful portrayal of the new queen as an attractive young woman at the age of seventeen was not only a legitimist image of exiled royalty awaiting restoration, but also a powerful statement of dynasticism which declared that heirs may now be expected. Maria Clementina would the very following year become pregnant with the new Prince of Wales, Charles Edward Stuart, who was later to be known to legend as ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie.’ The Queen was a Catholic of Counter-Reformation fervour and would be estranged from her husband for significant periods of time due to her children’s partly Protestant tutelage. This, combined with her short life – she would die aged thirty-three in 1735, thirty years before James III – destined that her portraits are comparatively scarce.

[1] See Corp, E. 2001.The King Over the Water: Portraits of the Stuarts in Exile after 1689. National Galleries of Scotland, p. 60.
[2] See Sharp, R. 1996. The Engraved Record of the Jacobite Movement. Scolar Press, p. 105-106.
[3] David was again to be paid two pistoles (33l. 5s. 0d.) three months later for what is assumed to have been two further works. See Corp, E. 2011. The Stuarts in Italy 1719-1766. Cambridge University Press, p. 101.

Provenance
The Nunnelley family collection, Scotland (19th century label verso);
To be inherited by William Nunnelley (Stipendiary Steward, the British Horseracing Authority), by whom sold, 2012;
Private Collection, Gloucestershire, England.