Footnotes

• This miniature is commensurate with an enamel, also by John Simpson and currently residing in the Royal Collection, after Franz Xaver Winterhalter's full-length portrait (c.1847) of Luisa Fernanda (V. Remington, Victorian Miniatures in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, 2010, vol.I, p.468 (no.848)). Although the Winterhalter portrait is known from a studio version at the Palace of Versailles, the whereabouts of the original are unknown and as such there is some debate as to the intended direction in which the Infanta is facing as subsequent versions have been inverted.
  
  Luisa Fernanda was the youngest daughter of King Ferdinand VII of Spain (1784-1833) and his fourth wife, Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies (1806-1878). When Luisa was fourteen years old, she married Antoine, Duc de Montpensier (1824-1890), the fifth son of Louis-Philippe, King of the French (1773-1850), in a dual nuptial ceremony alongside Queen Isabella II of Spain (1830-1904), her elder sister, and their cousin Francisco de Asís de Borbón (1822-1902). Initially, the sisters' marriages appeared to threaten the stability of Anglo-French relations with the potential for Luisa's children to have succession rights to the Spanish throne proving problematic for the Entente Cordiale that had existed since the culmination of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. Ultimately, Luisa and Antoine had nine children although only five reached full maturity. Luisa remained heiress presumptive to the Spanish throne until the birth of her neice, Maria Isabel, Princess of Asturias in 1851. In time, the relationship between Luisa and Isabella deteriorated as a result of Antoine's political manoueverings against the monarch.

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Category: Fine Art / Portrait Miniatures

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