3-097-601 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Clementina Sobieski, 1721. The Polish princess Maria Clementina Sobieska (1702-1735) married James III, the Stuart pretender to the English throne, and they established their residence in exile in Rome, where they enjoyed papal protection. There, they commissioned Francesco Trevisani as their portraitist. However in 1720, on the occasion of the birth of Clementina's firstborn son, Charles Edward Stuart, who would assume the title of Prince of Wales, a commission was given to one of Trevisani's pupils, Girolamo Pesci, to paint a set of three portraits: one of the king, one of the queen, and one of the sovereign with her newborn son. Queen Clementina died young in Rome in 1735 and was buried in St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. Her doctor named the cause of death as 'scorbutic disease', more commonly known as scurvy.