A Jacobite Gazetteer - Turin

Museo Civico d'Arte Antica

The Museo Civico d'Arte Antica is located in Palazzo Madama in the centre of Piazza Castello. The museum's collection includes several portraits of members of the Royal Family.

There is a portrait by François-Xavier Fabre of Queen Louise (wife of King Charles III) and Count Vittorio Alfieri.¹ Louise and Alfieri are seated together at a table covered with a carpet. Louise, famous for her correspondence, reads a letter. She is wearing a mob-cap on her head, and a black lace shawl around her shoulders; she wears a similar outfit in a miniature portrait now at the Musée Fabre in Montpellier. Alfieri has in front of him an open book, pen, paper, and two ink pots. He wears a signet ring on the ring finger of his left hand. He gazes intently at Louise. In the background (to Alfieri's right) can be seen the Duomo of Florence. There is another version of the painting in the Uffizi in Florence. The Turin version was at one time in the possession of the Alfieri family. It was left to the museum in 1939 by the marchesa Adele Alfieri di Sostegno.

Queen Louise and Vittorio Alfieri, by Fabre

The museum also owns another portrait by Fabre, this one of the Abbé Tomaso Valperga di Caluso.² The portrait was formerly owned by Queen Louise who willed it at her death in 1824 to the Abbé di Caluso's nephew, the count of Masino.³ It later belonged to the Alfieri family and was left to the museum in 1939 by the marchesa Adele Alfieri di Sostegno. The Abbé di Caluso was for many years a great friend and correspondent of Queen Louise and Count Alfieri; he was "an excellent specimen of the intellectual, liberal-minded, well-bred ecclesiastic of the eighteenth century".⁴ The Abbé di Caluso is shown seated at a table reading a book. Below the book are several sheets of paper - presumably correspondence - with a pair of reading glasses.

Abbé Tomaso Valperga di Caluso, by Fabre

There is a portrait of Queen Clotilde of Sardinia (wife of King Charles IV) by Giovanni Panealbo.⁵ Presumably the painting dates from before 1794, the year Clotilde exchanged court-dress for the penitential clothes that she invariably wore until her death. Here she wears a dress with gold brocade and elaborate lace sleeves. In her left hand is a white cloth, and in her right hand a folded fan. In her hair she wears a diamond-studded comb. An ermine cape has fallen from her shoulders and rests on the chair and table.

Queen Clotilde of Sardinia, by Panealbo

King Charles IV

There is a small relief portrait of King Charles IV made at the Vinovo porcelain factory and acquired by the museum in 1866.⁶ Charles is shown in left profile and wears an armoured breastplate covered with a cape. The round medallion is surmounted by an ornate bow.

There are two small circular relief portraits of King Victor (King Victor Emanuel I of Sardinia). The first medallion is by Amedeo Lavy and was acquired by the museum in 1913.⁷ Victor is shown in right-profile dressed in military uniform. Around the edge of the medallion is inscribed, "REX VICT EMMANUEL" (King Victor Emanuel). The second medallion is by Giovanni Lomello;⁸ it is a close copy of the medallion by Lavy.

King Victor, by Lavy

King Victor, by Lomello

Notes

¹ Luigi Mallé, I dipinti del Museo d'Arte Antica: catalogo (Torino: Museo civico di Torino, 1963), 58. The oil on canvas painting measures 70 cm high and 145 cm wide.

² Mallé, 59.

³ Alfred von Reumont, Die Gräfin von Albany (Berlin: R. Decker, 1860), 391.

⁴ Herbert M. Vaughan, The Last Stuart Queen: Louise, Countess of Albany, her Life & Letters (London: Duckworth, 1910), 35.

⁵ Mallé, 142-143. The oval oil on canvas painting measures 103 cm high and 80 cm wide. Giovanni Panealbo was a Turinese painter active from 1772 to 1799. He painted numerous portraits of members of the Royal Family; cf. Schede Vesme: L'arte in Piemonte dal XVI al XVIII secolo (Torino: Società Piemontese di Archeologia e Belle Arti, 1968), III, 772-775. There are two other portraits of Clotilde by Panealbo, one in the foresteria of the II Imperiale of the Palazzo del Quirinale in Rome, and the other at the Castello di Racconigi.

⁶ Enrico Castelnuovo and Marco Rosci, Cultura figurativa e architettonica negli Stati del Re di Sardegna, 1773-1861 (Torino: Città di Torino, 1980), I, 145. The glazed biscuit medallion is 15.2 cm high and 12.2 cm wide. The Vinovo porcelain factory near Turin was founded in 1776; it finally closed in 1820.

⁷ Castelnuovo and Rosci, II, 563. The gesso medallion is 11.5 cm in diameter. Amedeo Lavy was born in Turin in 1777 and died in the same city in 1864. He was the third generation of a family of medallists in the service of the House of Savoy.

⁸ Castelnuovo and Rosci, II, 608. The glazed biscuit medallion is 12.5 cm in diameter. Giovanni Lomello was active from 1790 to 1824 as a designer at the porcelain factory in Vinovo.

Image 1 (Queen Louise and Vittorio Alfieri, by Fabre): Laure Pellicier and Michel Hilaire, François-Xavier Fabre (1766-1837) de Florence à Montpellier (Montpellier: Musée Fabre, 2008), 185.

Image 2 (Abbé Tomaso Valperga di Caluso, by Fabre): Luigi Mallé, I dipinti del Museo d'Arte Antica: catalogo (Torino: Museo civico di Torino, 1963), tav. 318.

Image 3 (Queen Clotilde of Sardinia): Mallé, tav. 194.

Image 4 (King Charles IV): Castelnuovo and Rosci, I, 145.

Image 5 (King Victor, by Lavy): Castelnuovo and Rosci, II, 563.

Image 6 (King Victor, by Lomello): Castelnuovo and Rosci, II, 608.