Chiara Spinelli
1744–1823 · Italian
The story
Chiara Spinelli belonged to the top of Neapolitan society. Born in Naples in 1744, a daughter of the Duke of Laurino, she married the Prince of Belmonte at 18 and moved in the orbit of the Bourbon court of the Two Sicilies, the kingdom then ruling southern Italy. There she became a confidante of the young Austrian-born queen Maria Carolina and, for a time, the mistress of King Ferdinand I.
Her place in the Uffizi comes from a pastel. The self-portrait, dated 1783, shows her with her hair gathered and pinned with a rose beneath a light veil, worked in coloured chalks on paper. It hangs in the gallery's collection of artists' self-portraits, where a noblewoman who painted takes her place among professional painters. She died in Naples in 1823, at 79.