3-097-610 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Infanta Maria Luisa Teresa de Borbón, later Duchess of Sessa, 1834. Portrait of Infanta María Luisa Teresa del Carmen Francisca de Asís de Borbón (1824-1900) in which the ten-year-old Infanta poses against a shadowy landscape, carefully holding a rose in her left hand, while with the right she shyly touches the hem of her dress, repeating a typical courtly gesture of offering. Dressed in a long white gown with puffed sleeves and an elegant high bun with ribbons behind her ears ending in curls, the Infanta wears discreet jewellery appropriate to her age and station. She was the fifth child of Infante Francisco de Paula de Borbón, Duke of Cádiz, and María Luisa de Borbón, Princess of the Two Sicilies. Infanta Luisa Teresa, for her part, entered into a morganatic marriage in 1847 - as a result of which she was obliged to renounce any eventual succession rights - with José María Osorio de Moscoso (1828-1881), the 16th Duke of Sessa, with whom she had three children.