Francisco LACOMA Y FONTANET (Barcelona 1784 - 1849 Paris) - Lot 245

Francisco LACOMA Y FONTANET (Barcelona 1784 - 1849 Paris) Portrait of Infante Carlos Luis de Borbón y Braganza (1818-1860), future "Count of Montemolin", at around age 6, playing soldier with a small cannon, rifle, sword and drum. Oil on canvas (original canvas) 34.5 cm x 24 cm. Signed lower left "Lacoma". Old restorations Carlos Luis de Borbón y Braganza (1818-1861), Spanish prince, was the son of Infante Carlos María Isidro de Borbón, Carlist pretender to the Spanish throne, and the Portuguese princess Maria Francisca de Bragança. Born in Port-Vendres, in exile after the fall of his grandfather Charles IV, he was raised in a climate of piety, legitimism and monarchical traditionalism. During the First Carlist War (1833-1840), he accompanied his father in the fight against the liberal usurpers, embodying from his adolescence the hope of an absolutist restoration. On the death of his elder brother, he became heir to the Carlist rights and took the title of Count of Montemolín, recognized as Charles VI by his supporters. He made several attempts to rekindle the Carlist cause, including the abortive expedition of 1860, during which he was captured and forced to abdicate under pressure from the Isabelline government. Once freed, he reneged on his abdication, but the Carlist cause was already weakened by internal divisions and partisan fatigue. Exiled to Trieste, he led an austere and melancholy existence, marked by religious fervor. He died in 1861, leaving the Carlist succession to his brother Juan de Borbón y Braganza, in an apparent climate of dynastic crisis and ideological exhaustion for the movement. We know of another portrait of the model as a child, posing with a small rifle, by an anonymous painter preserved in the Spanish royal collections at the Royal Palace of Riofrio (inv. unknown).