Portrait of Louis XV of France with the Infanta Mariana Victoria of Spain

Louis XV was declared of age in February 1723, at 13, and this canvas was painted that year. He is holding the hand of a five-year-old, the Spanish Infanta Mariana Victoria, brought to Paris the year before to be raised as the future queen of France. Two years later the French sent her home. The king's ministers wanted an heir sooner than a bride of seven could provide one, and Louis married Marie Leszczyńska, daughter of a dethroned king of Poland, instead. Madrid treated the return of the Infanta as an insult and sent the two French princesses at its own court back across the Pyrenees. The signature in the lower right, on the cushion, reads De Troy filius pinxit 1723, de Troy the son. His father François de Troy was the better-known portrait painter at the time, and the son took care to say which of them had done the work. The picture hung in the ducal palace at Parma before it came to Florence, some time around the 1860s.