Marie Eléonore GODEFROID (1778-1849), attribué... Lot n° 16

Portrait of Marie-Joséphine Louise de Savoie (1753-1810) as Queen of France. Oil on canvas, unsigned (lining). N°463 on the back of the stretcher. In a wood and gilded stucco frame. H. 97 x L. 81 cm. Exhibition CMN, L'anti Marie-Antoinette, Marie-Joséphine Louise de Savoie. Chapelle expiatoire, Paris, September 5 - October 26, 2019 (on display). Provenance - Osenat sale, June 10, 2012, lot 129. - Private collection, Paris. History This royal and historic portrait is the only known oil-on-canvas depiction of the Comtesse de Provence in the 19th century. Probably posthumous, painted between 1810 and 1814, just before the accession of her husband, the future King Louis XVIII, to the throne, it was long considered lost. The Queen of France is seated in an armchair upholstered in gold fleurdelisé fabric on a royal blue background. Dressed in a white gown and adorned with pearls, she wears a diadem and a bodice clasp adorned with a fleur-de-lys on a blue background. Although Marie-Joséphine Louise de Savoie is not listed among the queens of France, as she died in 1810, four years before her husband's accession to the throne, Louis XVIII wrote in his memoirs, published in Brussels in 1833 by Louis Hauman: "This year of 1810 was to be unfavorable to me, ending with the death of my wife the queen, who died at Goldfield Hall on November 13, 1810. This excellent princess, to whom our misfortunes had doubly attached me, had borne them with uncommon magnanimity: quiet, when vulgar friends gave in to their despair, she never did one of those acts of weakness which lower the dignity of a prince. Nor did she ever give me any domestic trouble, and she was as queenly in exile as she would have been on the throne. Her gentle cheerfulness suited me; her courage, which nothing could dampen, tempered mine; in a word, I can say of the queen my wife what my grandfather Louis XIV said of his when he lost her: "Her death is the first sorrow she has given me. The queen, aged fifty-seven, had not only all my regrets, but also those of my relatives and our servants. The royal family lavished upon me a host of delicate and sustained attentions. They wanted Her Majesty's remains to be buried in London with all the honours accorded to the queens of France in the fullness of their power. It is in Westminster that these dear remains rest; may the earth be light to them! I am convinced that the soul who dwelt there now dwells in the heavenly regions, where she prays with the blessed members of our family, for her husband and for France". In 1811, her body was transferred to the Chapel of Saint Lucifer in the Cathedral of Saint Mary in Cagliari (Sardinia), where it remains to this day. Literature - Charles Dupêchez, La reine velue, Paris, Grasset, 1993. - Vicomte de Reiset, Joséphine de Savoie, Comtesse de Provence, Paris, Emile-Paul Frères, 1913.