Oil on canvas:  114 x 90.5 cm. / 50 x 35.5 in.

In the original carved and gilded 18th Century Louis XVI frame

Inscribed with the sitter’s titles and signed: peint à Dresde en 1755
Provenance: This painting was almost certainly given by the sitter to his brother, Francois, Comte de Saint Etienne and remained with his descendants until its recent sale.

In 1740, a commission from Wilhelmine of Prussia to redecorate the Hermitage Castle in Bayreuth brought the young Torelli north and to Saxony soon after; there Torelli decorated the palace chapel in Dresden, the state rooms of Nischwitz Castle and painted principal figures in Bellotto’s twenty-nine views of the city of Dresden. The artist completed this elegant portrait too while at the Dresden court. He would later travel to St. Petersburg and become court painter to Empress Catherine the Great.

The sitter, Joseph de Saint Etienne Borne, was a colonel of the royal guard and adjutant-general of the Saxon Infantry. He however renounced this military career – along with its dashing uniform and the helmet beside him that shows the Bourne coat of arms- to enter religious life. The Polish King assented to this unusual request and in May 1755, even as this portrait was being completed, August III asked the French Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld to find an appropriate position amongst the clergy for the Comte. Borne went on to receive a bachelor’s degree in civil and canon law at the University of Paris.