Diego Pignatelli d'Aragona (1687–1750) and an Enslaved African Servant

This oil sketch would have been shown to the sitter, Diego Pignatelli, Duke of Terranova, for approval before work was begun on the finished portrait, which is life-size. The duke wears the robes and collar of the order of the Golden Fleece, conferred on him in 1731 by the Hapsburg Emperor Charles VI. Pignatelli was a prince of the Holy Roman Empire and remained faithful to the Austrians even after rulership of Naples passed to the French Bourbons. Solimena was the outstanding painter of eighteenth-century Naples, with a European reputation.

Credit: Rogers Fund, 1967