Italian School, circa 1800

Anonymous sale, Florence, Palazzo Internazionale delle Aste ed Esposizioni, 30 November 1974, lot 339 (as Zaccaria Pulini);

Private collection, Rome, by 1977;

Anonymous sale, Venice, Franco Semenzato & Co., 12 October 1986, lot 186 (as Neoclassical Painter);

Where acquired by the present owners.

A. Busiri Vici, ‘Il primo e l’ultimo ritratto di Elisa Bonaparte’, in Antichità Viva, vol. 16, 1977, pp. 33–34, reproduced figs 1 and 2 (as by an anonymous artist).

Élisa Bonaparte was Napoleon I’s eldest sister to survive infancy. On 1 May 1797, she married Félix Pasquale Baciocchi Levoy (1762–1841), a member of a Corsican noble family. In March 1805, Napoleon made the couple Prince and Princess of Piombino. The principality of Lucca was added to their holdings later that year. Finally, in March 1809, Élisa was made Grand Duchess of Tuscany.

Andrea Busiri Vici (see Literature) dated this painting around 1794, when Élisa would have been only seventeen. This would make this portrait the first known likeness of Napoleon's eldest sister. He argued that the work must have been executed before Élisa's marriage to Félix in 1797, on account of the inscription on the cameo she holds (Zaccaria. Pulini.), which could represent the name of a previous lover. It appears unlikely that this inscription is instead an artist's signature, as the few extant works by the Italian painter of this name, active during the early nineteenth century, bear little stylistic resemblance to the present painting.¹

¹ For example: I. Fiumi Sermattei, '"Per lo Stato" e "fuori Stato". L'esportazione delle opere d'arte da Roma verso lo Stato Pontificio e l'estero (1814–1829)', in Lo Stato Pontificio sotto Leone XII. Politiche, periferie e società, R. Regoli, R. Piccioni and I. Fiumi Sermattei (eds), Ancona 2022, reproduced in colour p. 163, fig. 5.