The definitive portrait of the last queen of France, Marie Antoinette, isn’t actually her, new research has suggested. The 1762 painting was believed to depict Marie at the age of seven. Now, one researcher claims it’s really her sister, Maria Carolina. Antoinette was decapitated by a guillotine in Paris during the French Revolution. Professor Catriona Seth, scholar of French literature at the University of Oxford, visited the collection of artist Jean–Étienne Liotard in Geneva. Here, she inspected paintings of Antoinette and 10 of her siblings. Now, Seth claims, in research written but not yet published, the painting portrays Maria, the future queen of Naples. The giveaway, she says, is a medal, the Order of the Starry Cross, pinned to her chest. It was only awarded to Antoinette in 1766, four years after the painting was completed. Carolina, meanwhile, was awarded it in 1762. “I am certain that the picture said traditionally to be Marie Antoinette is in fact Maria Carolina,” Prof. Seth told The Daily Mail. She thinks a second Liotard painting shows the future queen of France. The girl in that picture holds a red rose, “a recurring feature of portraits of Marie Antoinette throughout her life.”
Read it at The Daily Mail
