Marie Antoinette, Queen of France (?)

The lady represented as a river goddess and covered merely by a veil is doubtlessly one of the most inventive miniatures by the Turin-born artist Ignazio Pio Vittoriano Campana. Whereas the model in most of his works – almost exclusively portraits of ladies – is shown in a standardised pose with her torso slightly turned to the right while her left arm is propped on a table,¹ the sitter in this miniature is resting in the water,her arms folded around the head of a dolphin. She is holding a cluster of reed sand a coral branch as attributes. The dolphin’s wide snout, its big nostrils and the oversized eyes with their human appearance all reveal that the artist copied the animal from a reference; presumably he had never been able to observe such sea mammals in real life.

The miniature was sold in the trade as a portrait of an unknown person, but presumably represents Queen Marie Antoinette.² The comparison with verified portraits of her by her court miniaturist shows only superficial resemblance, yet Campana adapted his sitters to an ideal of beauty even more than other miniaturists did, and thus individual traits became scarcely discernible. The dolphin speaks for the identification as the French queen (in French the heirs to the throne were referred to as Dauphin) – it could refer to Marie Antoinette’s son Louis, who was born in 1781. Also the coral branch supports the identification as the French queen – the coral could symbolise her royal lineage. In addition, the origin of the work – King Umberto II of Italy – supports this theory, as his family was related to the French royal family.³ Both of Louis XVI’s brothers married daughters of Victor Amadeus III from Sardinia-Piedmont.

B. P.