Marie Adelaide of France as Diana

Nattier signed and dated this canvas at the lower left, Nattier pinxit 1745. The sitter is Madame Adélaïde, a daughter of Louis XV, 13 years old, leaning against a tree with a crescent in her hair and a bow in her hand, dressed as Diana the huntress. He finished the composition that September as a companion to his portrait of her elder sister Henriette as Flora, the two of them meant for the king's bedchamber at the château de Choisy. Several versions of the picture exist, at Versailles, at Niort and one reported in Madrid, so which canvas travelled where is a real question. The Gallerie degli Uffizi trace this one out of France. It was probably sent to Spain in 1746 to Louise Élisabeth, the king's eldest daughter, who had married the Infante Don Philip. She carried it to Parma in 1748 and hung it in the Sala Verde of the ducal palace there. It reached Florence around the 1860s, and it hangs in a Sala Verde again, in the Royal Apartments on the Palatina's floor of Palazzo Pitti.