Vincenzo Camuccini’s drawing of Maria Luisa de Bourbon has sold to The Hamburger Kunsthalle.
The 15 x 11in (39 x 29cm) work is by Italian artist Vincenzo Camuccini (1771-1844). It is related to a portrait of the sitter, the daughter of King Charles IV of Spain and Queen Maria Luisa de Bourbon Parma, painted in c.1817, now in the Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Palazzo Pitti in Florence.
It was painted while she was living in Rome after the years of Napoleonic domination, during which her kingdom, Etruria, was annexed and she was exiled with her children. The Congress of Vienna had by this point assigned the Duchy of Lucca to her, and the portrait shows her shortly before she departs to take possession of it.
Camuccini may have produced the drawing when the painting was delivered, in order to keep a memento of it – perhaps using it to produce the second version of the portrait the year she died.
The typical neoclassical scene shows the sitter in a contemplative mood surrounded by a simple but precisely drawn room. The fashion for elegance, composure and noble carriage indicated by this posture was repeated in numerous portraits of the age.
Offered for a five-figure sum, it is the second drawing that the gallery has sold to the German institution, the previous one being a military scene, c.1810-15, of the ancient Roman hero Horatius Cocles.
