Portrait of Maria Adelaide of France in Turkish-style clothes

Maria Adelaide of France (1732–1800) appears here in Turkish-style dress rather than the mythological guise Nattier typically chose for her. Liotard's 1753 portrait, now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, reflects the turquerie fashion that swept European courts in the mid-century—wearing Ottoman costume was a playful assertion of cultural sophistication and openness to the exotic. That a daughter of Louis XV should be depicted in Turkish dress speaks to how thoroughly the fashion had penetrated even the most formal levels of French court society. Liotard, with his authentic Constantinople experience and continued Turkish dress, was the natural choice for such a commission. The Uffizi's holding of this work reflects the Medici and later Italian collections' broad European acquisition policies. Maria Adelaide's later life—survival through the Revolution and exile in Trieste—gives this youthful portrait in Turkish fancy dress an inadvertent poignancy as an image of the ancien régime's confident playfulness before the deluge.

Canvas in Liotard's full mature technique: the Turkish costume provides elaborate textile surfaces that engage his precise material observation. The young princess's face receives careful individual modelling, while the exotic dress is rendered as a simultaneous celebration of Liotard's speciality and the court's fashionable orientalism.