Prince Henry Benedict Clement Stuart, 1725 - 1807. Cardinal York

Prince Henry Benedict Stuart — Cardinal York and younger brother of Bonnie Prince Charlie — was the last male representative of the royal House of Stuart. La Tour's 1746 pastel captures him as a young man of twenty-one, less than a year after the defeat of the Jacobite rising at Culloden. The cardinal's presence in Paris, where La Tour worked, reflects the Stuart court-in-exile's long dependence on French hospitality. As a young prince who would take holy orders in 1747, Henry Benedict occupied an unusual position — royal claimant, Roman Catholic cardinal, and cultural patron. La Tour's mastery of the pastel medium at this date was unrivalled in France, and his penetrating ability to convey character beneath the smooth surface of aristocratic dress makes this a psychologically complex image of a man whose dynastic claims would never be realised.

Pastel on paper, with La Tour's characteristic deep facial modelling achieved through layered strokes of varied tone and temperature. The surface has La Tour's distinctive rich, velvety quality, denser and more worked than Liotard's crisper hatching. Ecclesiastical or aristocratic dress is rendered with material confidence.