Details
WILLIAM MOSMAN (C. 1700-1771 ABERDEEN)
Portrait of Princess Maria Clementina Sobieska (1702-1735), wife of 'The Old Pretender', bust-length, in a gold dress and blue ermine-lined cloak, in a feigned oval
oil on canvas
2812 x 2378 in. (72.4 x 60.8 cm.)
inscribed with inventory number '51' (lower left)
Provenance
The Earls of Kintore, Keith House, Inverurie, Aberdeenshire, and by descent to,
Alexander Drogo Montagu, 10th Duke of Manchester (1902-1977), and by inheritance to the present owner.
Special notice
Please note this lot is the property of a consumer. See H1 of the Conditions of Sale.
Sale Room Notice
We would like to thank Peter Pininski and Professor Edward Corp for suggesting an attribution to William Mosman (c. 1700-1771 Aberdeen) and for offering additional information on the provenance of the lot.
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Lot Essay

The sitter, daughter of Prince Sobieski, married Prince James Francis Edward Stuart (1688-1766), at Montefiascone on 1 September 1719. Under the terms of the anglo-French Treaty of 1716 that ended the War of Spanish Succession, 'The Old Pretender' had been forced to leave France after the failure of the 1715 uprising against George I. He settled in Rome in 1717 in the Palazzo del Re, a gift from Pope Clement XI. The house became the centre for Jacobite sympathizers on the Grand Tour.

William Mosman visited Rome in 1732 and stayed for six years, where he made a number of copies of Stuart portraits. Mosman based his image on Francesco Trevisani's portrait of Maria Clementina of 1719, a version of which was sold at Christie's, South Kensington, 29 October 2015, lot 112. The present lot was presumably painted after Mosman's prime copy of 1733 which is today in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery (acc. no. PG 886) and was previously attributed to Francesco Trevisani.

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