Christine of France and Her Children

From left to right, this family portrait shows the future Charles Emmanuel II, Margaret Yolande, future Duchess of Parma, Henriette Adelaide, who was to become the Electress of Bavaria, and Christine of France in widow’s weeds (which means the painting was made after the death of her husband Victor Amadeus I in 1637). In the middle distance, Princess Ludovic. The painting, which was made in monochrome, was quite probably a prototype for a model of a portrait that was to be replicated a number of times: one copy, in colour, now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena, was made by the court painter Philibert Torret, who was commissioned by Victor Amadeus I to decorate the Royal Palace and who made a genealogical series of the princesses of Savoy to a commission from the duke in 1633.