Lot 31: Louis du Guernier (French, 1614-1659)

Marguerite Louise d'Orleans (1645-1721), wearing low-cut pink dress with pearl-bordered jewels at her sleeve and corsage, pearl necklace and drop-pearl earring, her hair centre-parted and with ringlets
enamel on gold with white counter-enamel, turned pearwood frame, erroneously labelled on reverse
Oval, 31mm. (1 1/4ins.) high

Louis and his younger brother Pierre were both active as enamellers in France during the 17th Century. The former is known to have painted both Louisa Henrietta, Princess of Orange (Collection of the House of Orange-Nassau); and a portrait of Charles II of England as a child (Royal Collection).
Marguerite Louise d'Orleans was the wife of Cosimo III de Medicis. Marguerite was beautiful, fun-loving, extremely lively, witty and refined, but also stubborn and selfish. Her husband on the other hand was melancholic and his contemporaries claimed that he never laughed. Before their marriage, 16-year-old Marguérite Louise had fallen in love with her cousin Charles of Lorraine (1643-1690) and possibly took him as her lover. Cosimo III, however, was averse to physical contact and feared that "sexual activity would undermine his health". Sophia of Hanover reported: "He sleeps with his wife but once a week, and then under supervision of a doctor." Marguérite Louise repeatedly refused to share her bed with her grave husband for months and around 1665 she was temporarily exiled from court. During her pregnancies she unsuccessfully tried to induce a miscarriage and in 1671, while she was pregnant with her third child, Gian Gastone (later Duke of Tuscany), she even tried to starve herself. Four years after her son's birth she left for France, never to return. There she lived on a pension supplied by her husband.