Workshop of Charles-André van Loo

In 1747 Carle van Loo painted Marie Leszczyńska, queen of France, standing full length in court dress. He was the most sought-after painter in Paris and would be made first painter to Louis XV in 1762. An official likeness of that kind was also a template. Copies went to embassies, to provincial bodies and to foreign courts as gifts, and the copying was work for the painter's own shop.

The canvas in the Sala Verde of the royal apartments at Palazzo Pitti is one of them. Fernand Engerand, who published the accounts of the Bâtiments du Roi, the royal office that handled building and art commissions, found a 1748 entry for a copy of the large portrait of the queen that the king had asked for Spain. The picture went from Madrid to Parma, hung in the ducal palace there, and reached Florence between 1860 and 1870.

Bottega di on an Italian museum sheet describes that arrangement, a work made in the master's rooms by assistants who had his drawing and his colours, and sent out under his name. Who held the brush for this canvas is still argued. The museum's sheet allows that van Loo may have painted it himself and records that it is more often given to Laurent Pécheux, a French painter who made his career in Italy. Set beside the 1747 original, now at Versailles, the Florence version lacks one thing, the bust of Louis XV standing at the queen's side.