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Lot Essay
The sitter was the third daughter of Georg August (1683-1760), electoral prince of Hanover (and after 1727 elector of Hanover and King George II of Great Britain), and his wife, Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1683-1737). She was born in June 1713 at the Palace of Herrenhausen in Hanover, Germany, the summer residence of her grandfather, Georg Ludwig, elector of Hanover (and from 1714 King George I of Great Britain). In October 1714, shortly after her grandfather acceded to the throne of Great Britain, she and her elder sisters, Princess Anne (1709-1759) and Princess Amelia (1711-1786), accompanied their parents to England, where the family was installed in St James's Palace, while her brother Frederick Lewis (1707-1751) remained in Hanover. Horace Walpole reported in 1743 that marriage negotiations with Duke Adolphus Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp, later King of Sweden, were being discussed, at the initiative of Russia, but Caroline remained unmarried. She died on 28 December 1757 at St James's Palace and was buried on 5 January 1758 in Henry VII's chapel, Westminster Abbey.
The itinerant painter and etcher Jacopo Amigoni trained in Venice and worked in Munich, for the court of Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, before arriving in England in 1729, where he remained for ten years, interrupted only by a visit to France in 1736. His most accomplished decorative scheme to survive from this period is the series of large canvasses from the Story of Jupiter and Io at Moor Park Mansion, Herefordshire. Amigoni turned increasingly to portraiture during his stay in England however, as the fashion for ambitious Baroque decoration was waning, and soon caught the attention of George II and his court. This portrait of Princess Caroline was executed around the same time as a full-length portrait of her mother, Queen Caroline (1735; Wrest Park House, Bedfordshire, English Heritage). An autograph variant of this three-quarter-length portrait type of Princess Caroline, with adjustments to the sitter's hands and the background, is at Ickworth, Suffolk (National Trust). The sitter's portrait was also painted in three-quarter-length by Hans Hysing and Martin Maingaud, and in full-length by Philip Mercier in1728 (Shire Hall, Hertford).
The itinerant painter and etcher Jacopo Amigoni trained in Venice and worked in Munich, for the court of Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, before arriving in England in 1729, where he remained for ten years, interrupted only by a visit to France in 1736. His most accomplished decorative scheme to survive from this period is the series of large canvasses from the Story of Jupiter and Io at Moor Park Mansion, Herefordshire. Amigoni turned increasingly to portraiture during his stay in England however, as the fashion for ambitious Baroque decoration was waning, and soon caught the attention of George II and his court. This portrait of Princess Caroline was executed around the same time as a full-length portrait of her mother, Queen Caroline (1735; Wrest Park House, Bedfordshire, English Heritage). An autograph variant of this three-quarter-length portrait type of Princess Caroline, with adjustments to the sitter's hands and the background, is at Ickworth, Suffolk (National Trust). The sitter's portrait was also painted in three-quarter-length by Hans Hysing and Martin Maingaud, and in full-length by Philip Mercier in1728 (Shire Hall, Hertford).