Sixteen women - a selection of portraits

 

A young Kenyan woman holding her pet deer in Mombasa, by Underwood and Underwood, 1909.

 Infanta Ana de Jesús María de Braganza, Marchioness of Loulé, by Gillot Saint-Èvre, 1832.

The War Widow / Andromache, by Gerald Brockhurst, circa 1923.

Queen Mary of Modena, consort of King James II and VII, studio of Peter Lely, 1678.

Unknown woman, by Alexei Tyranov, circa 1840s.

 Rosine Fischler, Couintess Treuberg, née Edle von Poschinger, by Wilhelm Leibl,1877-78.

Portrait d'une élégante dame, by Simon-Bernard Lenoir.
The painting is signed and dated; the auction house that sold the portrait in 2016 interprets the date as 1756, but I think it more likely to be circa 1770.

New Orleans creole woman, by François Fleischbein, 1837.

Éléonore Louise Le Gendre de Berville, marquise du Hallay-Coëtquen, by Jean-Marc Nattier, 1751.

Wedding portrait of Maria Sophie, future Queen of Two Sicilies, née Duchess in Bavaria, 1859. The portrait is signed, but the signature is not decipherable. 

Cecily Manners, Countess of Rutland, by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, circa 1623-13.

A Swedish bride, circa 1880s.

Miniature of the artist's wife, née Marie-Anne Révérend, by Antoine Vestier, circa 1780.

Woman sketching in a landscape, by Barthélemy Vieillevoye, circa 1820s.

Margarethe, Princess of Thurn and Taxis, née Archduchess Margarethe Klementine of Austria, circa 1894.

Portrait of a lady reading, Ivan Kramskoi, circa 1881.

Jest of a jester - Meissen porcelain bust of Baron Schmiedel by Johann Joachim Kändler, 1739

 

(This first image is of a very slightly different version from those following; the lowermost mouse has moved to the other side of the baron's chest.)

This life-size porcelain bust of Baron Schmiedel wearing his postmaster's uniform was created by Johann Joachim Kändler in 1739. It was commissioned by the Saxon Elector Friedrich August II and is considered one of Kändler's most important works. He captured the essence of the court jester, whose stock in trade stoic and melancholy demeaner appears to have been a sort of precursor to later comic actors, such as Buster Keaton; even with four mice scampering over him - one actually dangling from his mouth - he refuses to express any sort of surprise or distress.

Johann Gottfried Schmiedel (né Gottfried Junge? circa 1700, probably Silesia - before 14 July 1756, Dresden), court jester and conjurer, alongside Joseph Fröhlich, at the Saxon-Polish court in Dresden. Born illegitimate, he was provided an education by a baron - whose name and title he apparently later "borrowed" - and later moved to Dresden where he worked, among other things, as a servant in noble houses. He was working in a restaurant when he was noticed by a member of the Saxon nobility who then hired him and introduced him at the Electoral Saxon court. From 1727 he was teamed with Fröhlich and the pair became widely known, working together until at least twenty years later. He held several positions during and after this period - bed master, castle inspector, chamber courier, hunting inspector, postmaster - and seems to have amassed some wealth; in the year of his death he established a foundation to provide educational grants to young people.

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Johann Joachim Kändler (15 June 1706, Fischbach - 18 May 1775, Meissen), German sculptor, remembered as the most important modeler of the Meissen porcelain factory, and arguably of all European porcelain of the period. Born the son of a pastor, he received a classical education and developed an excellent knowledge of Greek and Roman mythology. He began his professional life as an apprentice under the important Dresden court sculptor and altar carver Johann Benjamin Thomae. His great talent was soon noticed and at the age of only twenty-five he was appointed court sculptor to Augustus II and installed as a modeler at the Meissen porcelain manufactory; just two years later he succeeded to the position of "modelmaster." He continued to rise to more important positions within the factory, and the enduring fame of Meissen porcelain is based on the work completed by and under Kändler's direction. With his position he accumulated wealth, property, and status but at his death, after forty years with Meissen, he left behind extensive debts.

False idyll - the family of the duc de Berry in the parc de Bagatelle by François-Edmé Ricois, 1825

 

In the leafy, sun-dappled garden of the Château de Bagatelle the figures of Charles Ferdinand and Marie Caroline, duc and duchesses de Berry, are seen to be enjoying a pleasant afternoon chat, while a governess attends to their children, Princess Louise and Henri, duc de Bordeaux. But the charming family group is only a cruel illusion;, the duc de Berry was assassinated seven months before the birth of his son, fully five years before the creation of the painting.

Charles Ferdinand d'Artois, duc de Berry (24 January 1778, Versailles - 14 February 1820, Paris) was the younger son of the comte d'Artois, future Charles X of France. During the French Revolution he left France with his father, served in the émigré army of his cousin, the Prince of Condé, and then with the Russian army. In 1801 he moved to England where he stayed for thirteen years. In 1814 he returned to France, and his uncle Louis XVIII appointed him commander-in-chief of the army at Paris on Napoleon's return from Elba. In 1816 he married Princess Maria Carolina of Bourbon-Sicily with whom he had one surviving child, their daughter Louise, later Duchess of Parma, at the time of his death. Leaving the opera with his wife on 13 February 1820, he was stabbed by a disgruntled Bonapartist and died the next day. Seven months later, the duchess gave birth to a son, Henri, duc de Bordeaux. Later better known by his preferred title, the comte de Chambord, he was considered by French Legitimists to be their king, Henri V. The comte de Chambord married but had no issue, so the senior male Bourbon line became extinct at his death in 1883.

 A lithograph after the painting - which is now in the British royal collection -  was made by Louis Julien Jacottet.

Interesting that, though this is supposed to be a copy of the original, all five of the main figures have been repositioned.

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François Edmé Ricois (29 August 1795, Courtalain - 21 January 1881, Mareil-Marly), French painter known for his views of castles and landscapes. 1816, he entered the École des Beaux-Arts, where he studied under Jean Victoire Bertin and Anne Louis Girodet. He made his Salon debut in 1819 and continued to exhibit there until just a few months before his death. He was awarded a second class medal at the Salon of 1824, and went on to exhibit widely in France and Switzerland, obtaining medals at Douai, Lille, Toulouse, and Cambrai. His daughter, Marie-Octavie Ricois, was also a painter.

Noble fragment - the Medici Riccardi equine bronze

 

Overall size: 81×95×40 centimeters (31 7/8×37 3/8×15 3/4 inches)

Adapted from Getty.edu:

The equine bronze protome known as the Medici Riccardi horse head in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale of Florence is likely a surviving part of a Hellenistic life-size equestrian sculptural group, which has been dated around the second half of the fourth century BC. The sculpture entered the antiquarian collections of the Medici in the fifteenth century and was cited for the first time in 1495 as part of Lorenzo il Magnifico’s antiquarian collection, although it had certainly been found well before that. Its close resemblance to the colossal Carafa horse head in Naples, executed by Donatello between 1456 and 1458 in imitation of this original, provides an indirect terminus ante quem.

The head is also cited in the Confiscation Decree by the Republican Government as being among the artifacts of the garden of the Palazzo Medici. Between 1495 and 1512 it was in Palazzo Vecchio (perhaps in the Cortile della Dogana); then it returned to the aforementioned garden, where it was admired by Lorenzo Bernini in 1665. In 1672 the artwork was restored and adapted as a fountain mouth by Bartolomeo Cennini.

After being moved to Palermo in 1800 in order to avoid confiscation by Napoleon, the head returned to Florence in 1815, when it was displayed at the Galleria degli Uffizi. Finally, in 1890, it was transferred to the Regio Museo Archeologico, now the Museo Archeologico Nazionale of Florence.

During conservation in 2015 widespread traces of gold leaf were found, whose analysis unequivocally demonstrates that the artifact was originally gilded.

Study, study, work - Scène romaine / La Charité romaine, by Bouguereau, 1855

 

Oil and graphite study.

La Charité romaine, watercolor study.

Scène romaine, oil on canvas.

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It's interesting to see how the painting began and finished, but I have to admit that I much prefer the study to the finished piece.

Exquisite headache - the Bavarian ruby and spinel diadem

 

The diadem is the grandest item in the parure created by court jeweler Caspar Rieländer around 1830 as a gift from King Ludwig I of Bavaria to his wife, née Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen. The parure, which is set with rubies, spinels, and diamonds, also includes two bracelets, a necklace, and earrings. Its size and weight making it practically unwearable, the diadem was nevertheless one of those worn by Crown Princess Antonia, née Princess Antoinette of Luxembourg, when she posed, wearing court dress, for official portraits after her marriage. The full parure is now in the collection the Schatzkammer (Treasury) of Munich's Residenz.

On display in the Residenz's Schatzkammer. (I don't believe what appears to be an epaulet is actually a part of the parure.)