Portrait of Joachim Murat (1767-1815), his wife, Caroline Bonaparte (1782-1839) and their family, with a view of Naples beyond

This small, informal family portrait depicts Joachim Murat, the King of Naples, with his wife, Caroline, the youngest sister of Napoleon Bonaparte, and their four children: Achille (1801-1847), who became the Prince of Cleves then Prince of Naples and Prince Murat; Lucien (1803-1878), Prince of Ponte Corve then Prince Murat; Laetizia (1802-1859), future Marquise Pepoli; and Louise (1805-1885), future Countess Rasponi. The setting is the terrace that served as a vast exterior connection between the apartments of the king and queen in the Palazzo Reale in Naples. Joachim planted it with lemon trees for Caroline in 1810 and was said to have strolled the terrace every morning; the royal couple often dined there and the children repaired to the terrace to play. Vesuvius is seen erupting in the background.

Caroline was born in Ajaccio on 25 March 1782. In May 1797 she met Murat, the son of an innkeeper who rose to become Bonaparte’s aide-de-camp in the Italian army. After their marriage on 20 January 1800, Caroline remained at the Tuileries where in 1801 Achille was born. The following year, Caroline accompanied her husband to Milan where she gave birth to their second son, whose direct descendants are the present Murat princes. With the proclamation of the Empire in 1804, Joachim Murat was given the Kingdom of Naples, where the royal family arrived in September 1808. Following Napoleon’s final downfall in 1815, Murat was court-marshalled and executed, just after Waterloo, for attempting to raise a revolt in Calabria. Caroline found refuge in the Château de Frohsdorf in Austria where she lived under the name of the Comtesse Lipani, before establishing residence in Florence, where she would marry the Neapolitan general, Francesco Macdonald.

The present painting is dated 1811 and signed by the artist with his initials. Descamps was a French painter and engraver, born in Lille. A pupil of François-Andre Vincent, he travelled to Italy for study and remained to become a court painter to the Murats in Naples. He died in Paris in 1858.