Isn’t she beautiful! In fact there were two paintings. The other is identified as of Lady Anne Somerset, aged only fourteen and wearing the same dress but unbuttoned to partially expose her breast. What were her family thinking?! What must this sensuous costume have felt like to these young girls? What passions might it unleash?
I first saw this intriguing painting in 2015, at an exhibition of Liotard’s paintings in the Scottish National Gallery. I went to see it again in the Royal Academy in 2016, then finally I viewed it in its regular place in Florence’s Uffizi. I was a little obsessed, trust me it happens to historical fiction writers a lot!
So that was that – my imagination was running riot. First I wanted to be certain I was free to make her my fictional protagonist. At one time it was thought that the sitter was the daughter of Louis XV, but that has been disproved. The setting is identifiable as Liotard’s studio in Constantinople, where the Swiss artist lived between 1738 and 1742. The real painting could have been painted later and after Liotard travelled, but since I wanted to begin in Turkey, 1742 is the latest possible date.
The girl is certainly not Turkish, Liotard would not have been permitted to paint a Turkish woman. Choosing to make her British is not beyond the realms of possibility. Liotard was brought to Constantinople by British aristocrats making their Grand Tour. He made friends with the then British Ambassador, Sir Everard Fawkener and decided to stay on.
This gave me my beginning. A young British girl visiting Constantinople. I tied her visit to Sir Everard Fawkener and gave her a back story leading her to him. She has brown hair and heavy, dark eyebrows, the opposite of an ‘English rose’. The kind of girl who might have felt like an outsider. She is reading a book that has ‘Virtue’ in the title but she appears to be blushing. What is going on in her head?
My story was up and running. A young English girl steps out of her corsets and into that costume. She feels beautiful and desirable for the first time. The artist’s young apprentice is standing beside Liotard and it is his touch that has caused her to blush…
I wanted to bring the story to my beloved Edinburgh in Scotland. The famous Jacobite Rebellion happened there just three years later in 1745. In 1742, James Stuart, the ‘King over the Water’ lived with his family in Rome. His son, who became known as ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’, left Rome in secret in 1744, in pursuit of his campaign to install his father as king.
So my heroine, who is now called Isabella, is going to travel to Rome and get involved with the Jacobites. Why would an English girl want to do that? Why for love of Vittorio the mysterious apprentice, who of course doesn’t turn out to be who he seems!
As I unravel my story from Constantinople, through Rome then on the VERY long journey overland towards Scotland, I discover something extraordinary. Sir Everard Fawkener was actually in Edinburgh in 1746, as Secretary to the Duke of Cumberland, chief enemy of Bonnie Prince Charlie. How perfect is that..
So these were my inspirations. You will have to wait a little longer to hear the whole story. Watch this space.