Double portrait of Vittorio Alfieri e Contessa Luisa Stolberg d'Albany

This double portrait of 1796 unites two of the most fascinating figures in the Florentine cultural world of the late eighteenth century: the Italian tragic poet Vittorio Alfieri and Louise of Stolberg, Countess of Albany, widow of the Jacobite pretender Charles Edward Stuart. Their relationship, one of the great literary love affairs of the age, began while Louise was still technically married to the Young Pretender and continued until Alfieri's death in 1803. Fabre was Louise's closest companion and the executor of both their estates, making this double portrait an intimate document of their triangular friendship. The Museo Civico d'Arte Antica holds the painting, in Turin, Alfieri's native city, giving it added resonance as a civic monument to Italy's greatest Neoclassical dramatist. The work is remarkable for the evident mutual regard it projects between the sitters, resisting the formality typical of official double portraits in favour of a more personal, almost private register. It stands as one of the key images of the late Enlightenment literary world, in which intellectual partnership between men and women was increasingly valued and portrayed.

The double portrait format required careful compositional management to balance two figures without the painting appearing crowded. Fabre positions the sitters to create a subtle visual dialogue between them through aligned gazes and body orientation. Oil on canvas, with warm, unified lighting that draws the faces together tonally across the divided composition.