Born almost exactly a year apart, after their brother Ferdinand Philippe, the duc d'Orléans, the two sisters were the eldest of their parent's ten children, eight of whom survived to adulthood. The portraits were painted a year before the July Revolution of 1830, the event that raised their father to power, and made their close-knit family France's royal family.
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| Louise d'Orléans, before her marriage styled mademoiselle de Chartres. |
Louise d'Orléans (Louise-Marie Thérèse Charlotte Isabelle; 3 April 1812, Palermo - 11 October 1850, Ostend) was the second child and eldest daughter of Louis-Philippe and Marie-Amélie, from 1830 to 1848 King and Queen of the French. In 1832 she became the first Queen of the Belgians as the second wife of King Leopold I. The marriage was a political arrangement between France and Belgium and Louise was unhappy to leave France and her family. Of a shy nature and a delicate constitution, she had little of a public role as queen. The couple had four children, three surviving to adulthood, but she died of tuberculosis at the age of only thirty-eight.
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| Marie d'Orleans, before her marriage styled mademoiselle de Valois. |
Princess Marie of Orléans (Christine Caroline Adélaïde Françoise Léopoldine; 12 April 1813, Palermo - 6 January 1839, Pisa) was the third child and second eldest daughter of Louis-Philippe and Marie-Amélie. A talented sculptor and artist - she was a student of Ary Scheffer - she had her own studio installed in the Tuileries Palace. She was described as a lively character, interested in both society and politics. In 1837, she married Prince Alexander of Württemberg. A member of the cadet branch of a not very prestigious princely family, her new husband was nevertheless closely related to most of the crowned heads of Europe. They had one child together. But only six months later, after traveling to Italy in hopes that the climate would bolster her rapidly faltering health, she died of tuberculosis; she was only twenty-five.
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These two paintings reside somewhere in the collection of the vast, uninhabited palace of Caserta, some twenty-two miles north of Naples. Begun in 1752, the complex - the largest palace erected in Europe during the eighteenth century - was constructed for the House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies as their main residence as kings of Naples. At first I wondered what these portraits of two French princesses were doing in an Italian palace, until I remembered that their mother was actually born there; Marie-Amélie was the tenth of eighteen children of Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies and Maria Carolina of Austria.
The paintings, as seen in these images, look to be extremely dirty, discolored, and much in need of conservation. Hersent was a good painter, and even veiled with grime as they are, disfigured with neglect, the fresh, tender charm of the young girls - Louise was only seventeen, Marie sixteen - is clearly discernable. And to me, the rather wretched state of the portraits somehow adds another note of poignancy to the stories of the sisters, in some strange way aligning with their early deaths. Their youth was never quite lost, then, but buried. The paintings survive, but exist, entombed, in the airless shadows of that vast palace.
The paintings, as seen in these images, look to be extremely dirty, discolored, and much in need of conservation. Hersent was a good painter, and even veiled with grime as they are, disfigured with neglect, the fresh, tender charm of the young girls - Louise was only seventeen, Marie sixteen - is clearly discernable. And to me, the rather wretched state of the portraits somehow adds another note of poignancy to the stories of the sisters, in some strange way aligning with their early deaths. Their youth was never quite lost, then, but buried. The paintings survive, but exist, entombed, in the airless shadows of that vast palace.
