Portrait of Francesco Ladatte

On 28 January 1733, in Turin, the sculptor Francesco Ladatte stood witness at the wedding of the painter Carle van Loo. They had first met as young men in Paris, met again in Rome around 1730, and in the early 1730s both were working in Turin for the Savoy court. About ten years after that wedding van Loo painted this portrait of his friend. Ladatte had been born in Turin in 1706 and taken to Paris as a boy, and by now he was a full member of the Royal Academy there. Around 1744 he moved back to his home city, and in January 1745 King Charles Emmanuel III named him his sculptor in bronze, with a yearly salary and the task of teaching sculpture. For the next four decades he made bronzes for the royal residences around Turin, where he died in 1787. The portrait reached the gallery much later, bought in 1889.