File:Luis de la Cruz y Ríos - Queen Maria Josefa Amalia of Saxony.jpg

"Signed and dated on the left side "Dn. Luis de la Cruz y Ríos lo pintó año de 1829". Provenance: -Collection Marqueses de Casa Argudín; Madrid. -Private collection Exhibitions: Rodríguez de Rivas, M., "Luis de la Cruz y Ríos", Museo Romántico, Madrid, 1952. Bibliography: Hernández Perera, J., "Los retratos reales de Luis de la Cruz y Ríos", Anuario de Estudios Atlánticos, no. 1, 1955, pp. 201-254. Reproduced on p. 231, plate VII. This is an important portrait of the Queen consort of Spain, María Josefa Amalia de Sajonia Borbón-Parma (Dresden, Germany, 1803-Aranjuez, Madrid, 1829). The sitter is depicted standing in a palatial setting between a large Empire-style armchair and a table covered with a red velvet tablecloth on which rests the royal crown. She wears an elegant long gown of white silk and chiffon with gold thread embroidery at the bottom of the skirt and long gloves (one of which has been removed) in the same colour. The rich headdress (made of feathers, flowers, pearls and ears of wheat), a necklace, a bracelet and chaton earrings (all made with pearls), and the corresponding distinctions such as the sash and cross of the Order of Maria Luisa complete her attire. On her belt is a pearl-embellished cameo with a portrait of her husband, King Ferdinand VII. This canvas is considered to be one of the finest court portraits by Luis de la Cruz y Ríos, the court painter of Ferdinand VII. Dated 1829, it is undoubtedly one of the last portraits painted of the sovereign during her lifetime, as she died on 18 May of the same year. According to Hernández Perera, it formed a pair with a Portrait of Ferdinand VII in Ceremonial Costume which once presided over the music room of the old Romantic Museum and was on display in the same institution when the great exhibition devoted to the painter was organised in 1952 to commemorate the first centenary of his death."