Francesca Ghirardi Lechi (1773–1806)

Born in Brescia, Gigola studied in Milan and between 1791 and 1796 was in Rome, where he frequented the Accademia di San Luca and won a first prize in composition. He then went to Brescia and to Paris, where he exhibited at the Salon from 1802 to 1804. Returning to Milan, he entered the service of the viceroy of Italy, Eugène de Beauharnais (1781–1824), whose portrait he painted. He also worked in enamel and illustrated The Corsair by Byron and other works.

Called Marie Pauline Bonaparte (1780–1825), Princess Borghese, in the catalogue of the miniatures in the Huntington collection (1897), the sitter has now (Falconi and Zuccotti 2001) been identified as Francesca Ghirardi Lechi. Zuccotti dates the work about 1803 and, in addition to two more portraits of Francesca by Gigoli (nos. 116–17), Falconi mentions one by Giuseppe Errante of about 1800 and another by Andrea Appiani of 1803.

Daughter of conte Faustino Lechi of Brescia and sister of Giuseppe and Teodoro, both generals in the Napoleonic wars, Francesca, called Fanny, married Francesco Ghirardi, a Brescian lawyer, in 1793; they had a daughter, Carolina. Stendhal, in his life of Napoléon (1817–18, first published 1929), writes of Francesca with admiration, calling her eyes the most beautiful he had ever seen.

[2016; adapted from Reynolds and Baetjer 1996; updated by Gretchen Wold]

Inscription: Signed (right, in brown): Gigola / F

Collis P. Huntington, New York (by 1897–d. 1900; life interest to his widow, Arabella D. Huntington, later [from 1913] Mrs. Henry E. Huntington, 1900–d. 1924; life interest to their son, Archer Milton Huntington, 1924–terminated in 1926)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "European Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," November 5, 1996–January 5, 1997, no. 206.

A Catalogue of Miniatures in the Collection of Collis P. Huntington. [New York], 1897, unpaginated, ill., as a portrait of Marie Pauline Bonaparte, Princess Borghese.

Graham Reynolds with the assistance of Katharine Baetjer. European Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1996, pp. 164, 166, no. 206, colorpl. 206 and ill. p. 165.

Bernardo Falconi in Italie, il sogno di Stendhal. Exh. cat., Palazzo del Banco di Chiavari e della Riviera Ligure, Genoa. Cinisello Balsamo (Milan), 2000, p. 55, under no. II.36, identifies the sitter as contessa Francesca Lechi Gherardi (or Ghirardi); notes Stendhal's admiration of her expressed in his life of Napoleon; gives biographical details; lists two other miniature portraits of her by Gigola, one in the Civici Musei di Brescia and another known only through a photograph in the archives of the Lechi family.

Bernardo Falconi and Anna Maria Zuccotti in Giambattista Gigola e il ritratto in miniatura a Brescia tra Settecento e Ottocento. Milan, 2001, p. 126, no. 118, ill., date it about 1803.