Portrait of Charles Emmanuel III

In 1734 Charles Emmanuel III, King of Sardinia, was at war in Lombardy. In the War of the Polish Succession he had joined France against Austria, Milan had opened its gates to him late in 1733, and in September 1734 the allied army under his command beat the Austrians at Guastalla. That year la Clementina, his court portraitist, painted him in armour, wearing the collar of the Annunziata, the highest Savoy order, and pointing his commander's baton at a fortified town in the distance, with crown and sceptre on a console behind him. For a long time the canvas was taken for the work of the French painter Carle van Loo. In 1893 the historian Alessandro Baudi di Vesme gave it back to Clementi on the strength of a document from 1738. She painted many replicas. One, signed and dated 1734, is in the Museo Bardini in Florence, and another hangs in the Italian embassy in London.