Antonio David (1704-1788), Portraits of Princes Charles Edward Stuart and Henry Benedict Stuart

Antonio David (1704-1788) Pendant portraits of Prince Charles Edward Stuart (1720-1788) and Prince Henry Benedict Stuart (1725-1807), a pair.
Oil on canvas
10 x 8 ins.
c. 1729

The Princes Charles Edward and Henry Benedict Stuart were the sons of James Francis Edward Stuart, de jure James III and VIII, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland. James was the legitimate hereditary heir of his father, James II and VII, who was exiled from his kingdoms to Louis XIV’s France during the Revolution of 1688. King James's loyal supporters at home and on the Continent would become known as the ‘Jacobites,’ literally followers of James. The princes were born into the exiled British court, which had moved in 1719 to the papal Palazzo Muti in Rome, and its overarching cause, the restoration of the Stuarts, would define their lives. In their formative years the heir to the throne, Prince Charles Edward, and his younger brother enjoyed an intimate friendship which may be observed in these pendant portraits.

This pair of portraits of the young princes are early versions of the celebrated pendants of c.1729-1732 by the principal painter of the Jacobite court, Antonio David. First commissioned by James III for his portrait in 1717, the king was impressed with the artist’s work and ability to faithfully paint multiple versions to disseminate the king’s image. 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 these was an essential attribute of any successful court painter, however this skill was particularly important for the Jacobites who depended upon them to familiarise their subjects with the likenesses of their estranged rulers.
Upon the return to Rome of James III after his unsuccessful invasion of Britain in 1715, the exiled king came under significant pressure from his followers in Britain to commission images of Charles and Henry to be engraved and disseminated widely, their appearance having significantly changed since earlier portraits. One pair was displayed in the Palazzo del Ray, another made for the Duke of Bedford in Scotland, which were first sent to Paris to be engraved without inscriptions to be safely smuggled into Britain. Extremely popular, these engravings were then reproduced in another set by John Simon in England the following year. So pleased was the king with the princes’ likenesses that David was commissioned to paint further versions until 1732. However, the later copies of these two popular portraits are marked by James’s desire for them to look ‘a little older than the life,’ indeed in some Henry is made to don armour (thus we can assume underscoring their candidacy to fight for the throne) [1]. When compared with the later copies therefore, the youthful visages of the princes in this pair of portraits indicates their likely being early versions. Other versions of this popular portrait type were also painted by David for Lord Marischal and John Urquhart of Cromarty [2].

When Charles would later famously act as James III’s regent in 1745 to reclaim his ancestral kingdoms, Henry was appointed to lead a 10,000 strong invasion force in his support from Dunkirk. When, however, Charles’s startling successes in Scotland and England – which won him the legend of ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ – had reversed and ground to a halt in the tragedy of Culloden, Henry’s potentially victory clenching mission was fated never to cross the Channel. After this calamity, Henry Benedict decided with his father’s blessing to follow the vocation he had desired from a young age. He was elected a cardinal in the Catholic Church in 1747 and soon thereafter consecrated as both a priest and bishop. Given that his grandfather had been principally usurped for his adherence to the Old Faith, Prince Charles saw his brother's elevation to the cardinalate as a great betrayal, one which would forever undermine their cause in the eyes of their intolerant subjects. Despite Charles Edward becoming the de jure ‘King Charles III’ on the death of James III in 1766, it would not be until 1785 that the two brothers were finally reconciled by Charles’s natural daughter Charlotte Stuart, Duchess of Albany, upon whose care he had begun to entirely depend (as he had on Henry’s financial support for some years). Despite their years of estrangement, Henry never ceased recalling his brother as the hero of the 45’ and was profoundly grieved by his death on the 31st of January 1788. From that morning however, Prince Henry was to be the last of the Stuarts. Although never formally crowned, he was addressed by loyal Jacobites and his large household as His Majesty, King Henry IX. The last legitimate pretender to the British throne’s motto read ‘Non desideriis hominum, sed voluntate Dei’ (‘Not by the choice of man, but by the will of God.’).

[1] See Corp, E. 2001. The King over the Water: Portraits of the Stuarts in Exile after 1689. Scottish National Galleries, p. 67.
[2] See Corp, E. 2011. The Stuarts in Italy, 1719–1766: A Royal Court in Permanent Exile. Cambridge University Press, p. 277-279.

Provenance
With Marcelo Violante of Chaucer Fine Art, Pimlico Rd., London;
Private Collection, United Kingdom.