Prince Friedrich Christian of Saxony

Prince Friedrich Christian of Saxony appears in multiple Carriera works in the Dresden collections, and this 1740 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts pastel represents a later image of the same prince portrayed in the 1739 Dresden work. By 1740 Friedrich Christian was eighteen — old enough for formal state portraiture — and the Virginia version may represent either a second sitting or a variant produced for a different client or purpose. The movement of this portrait to an American museum reflects the twentieth-century acquisition of European art by the major American institutions that assembled their collections primarily between 1880 and 1960. The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts built its European holdings through purchases and donations that brought works from across the continent, and this Carriera fits within its broader holdings of eighteenth-century European portraiture.

A second portrait of the same sitter one year apart allows consideration of how Carriera adapted her approach: whether the Virginia version is more or less finished than the Dresden, whether the composition differs, and whether the characterisation advances with the sitter's increased age. Both works represent Carriera in the late phase of her career.