Offered by Galerie Thierry Matranga
REQUEST INFORMATION
Oil on oval canvas from the workshop of François de Troy. Presumed Portrait of Marie Anne de Bourbon, represented in Cleopatra. Wearing a white dress trimmed with lace collar and sleeves and decorated with a red ribbon coral, the Dowager Princess of Conti is painted three quarters. The blue ducal mantle embroidered with gold thread (she is Duchess de la Valliere) on the right shoulder and a cloth with Greek motif on the left shoulder, she is about to dip a pearl in a bowl containing vinegar. This allegorical portrait evokes the story of Pliny describing the challenge of Cleopatra to Antony.
Dimensions: 65.5 x 54 cm custody - 85 x 74 cm with frame
Status: old relining. Few scattered restorations. Excellent conditions for this delicate portrait. Frame late seventeenth century carved and gilded motif of foliage and flowers.
Marie Anne de Bourbon (Vincennes 02/10/1666 - 03/05/1739 Paris), called "Mademoiselle de Blois," Conti princess, is the natural daughter of Louis XIV and Louise de La Valliere. She is legitimized in May 1667, and therefore called Mademoiselle de Blois. After the withdrawal of his mother among the Carmelites in 1675, she became Duchess de la Valliere and Vaujours. At 13, she married Louis-Armand de Bourbon, Prince de Conti, five years his senior. This marriage is a failure. The young princess whose beauty and grace are the heyday of the court, led a gallant life. In 1685, she suffers from smallpox. Her husband contracted the disease and is carried away in a few days. Rich widow at twenty, now the Dowager Princess of Conti is a free woman but as coveted by men than by women.
Account of Pliny the Elder Natural History - 119-121 Book IX: The Cleopatra's challenge to demonstrate to Antoine vanity ostentation of its banquets.
"There were two pearls, the largest that had ever existed, one and the other property of Cleopatra... Antoine asked what could be added to the magnificence of his table. She replied that in one dinner she would spend ten million sesterces. Antoine, eager to learn how, and without believing that possible, made a bet. The next day she ordered a sumptuous dinner ... She assured that she would eat ten million sesterces ... the servants placed before her a vase filled with vinegar ... she untied one of the pearls of his ears, plunged into the liquid and when it was dissolved, swallowed ... "
François de Troy (1645 - 1730) was born into a family of artists. His father Nicolas, already a painter, taught him his art. Under the reign of Louis XIV, he was one of the great portrait painters of his time alongside Hyacinthe Rigaud and Nicolas De Largillière. The artistic tradition continues with his son Jean-François de Troy who was a great painter.
