tiny-librarian:The top portrait, long mistakenly labelled as Marie Antoinette, has been properly ide
tiny-librarian:The top portrait, long mistakenly labelled as Marie Antoinette, has been properly identified as Maria Josepha. The portrait, which hangs in Schonbrunn, has even had the nameplate changed. It was painted in 1767 by Martin van Meytens, when Antoinette would only have been a young girl of about 12 years old. Josepha would have been 16 at the time, a young woman due to be married soon and looking much more mature, as the subject of the painting does. Antoinette was often said to look much, much younger than her years, something that was often remarked upon during her early years at the French Court.When you look at closeups of other portraits of Maria Josepha, the facial similarity becomes even more striking. There’s a distinctive deep dimple in her chin that you can see in the portrait, a feature not shared by her younger sister Antoinette. Another portrait, seen at the bottom was done by Francesco Liani, is confirmed as Josepha as well and is for all intents and purposes identical to the van Meytens one, and was likely a copy done of it. -- source link