María Luisa de Borbón y Vallabriga

María Luisa de Borbón y Vallabriga - Portrait of Francisco de Goya (1801);
the painting is believed by some experts to be a portrait of her sister María Teresa de Borbón y Vallabriga .

María Luisa de Borbón y Vallabriga (born June 6, 1783 in Velada , † December 1, 1848 in Paris ) was a Spanish aristocrat who gained the title of margravine through her marriage (1817) to Joaquín José de Melgarejo y Saurín († 1835) ( marquesa ) of Melgarejo and a Duchess of Quiroga.

biography

María Luisa de Borbón y Vallabriga was the third child of the Infante don Luis de Borbón y Farnesio , brother of King Charles III of Spain . , and María Teresa de Vallabriga , who came from the lower nobility . Her two older siblings were her brother Luis María de Borbón y Vallabriga (1777-1823) and her sister María Teresa de Borbón y Vallabriga (1780-1828). The wearing of the name component 'Borbón' was her father and his descendants until the death of Charles III. banned in 1788 to make clear the renunciation of possible claims to the throne.

She spent the first years of her life in the Palacio del Infante don Luis in Boadilla del Monte and in the not yet fully completed Palacio de la Mosquera in Arenas de San Pedro . The painter Francisco de Goya was a frequent guest in both castles and repeatedly portrayed her and her family. After the early death of her father (1785), she and her younger sister spent several years in the Convento de San Clemente in Toledo . In 1802 she went to live with her mother in Saragossa . In the turmoil of the French occupation of Spain and the Spanish War of Independence (1807-1814), she and her mother fled to Palma de Mallorca. In 1814 they both returned to Spain. Three years later she married Joaquín José de Melgarejo y Saurín, a confidante of the Spanish King Ferdinand VII. In 1822 she and her husband went to Paris; a year later, her sister also arrived there, but she died five years later. She and her husband spent some time in Rome, but returned to Madrid, where her husband supported the regent Maria Christina of Naples-Sicily , the fourth wife of Ferdinand VII, who died in 1833.

Five years after the death of her husband (1835) and returned to Paris, she bequeathed the art collection inherited from her father's side to her niece Carlota Luisa de Godoy y Borbón , the only daughter from her sister's marriage to Manuel de , since she had remained childless herself Godoy . She died in 1848 and was buried in the chapel of the Palacio del Infante don Luis in Boadilla del Monte next to her sister, who had died in 1828.

literature

• Janis A. Tomlinson (Ed.): Goya. Images of Women. National Gallery of Art, Washington DC et al. 2002, ISBN 0-300-09493-0 .

Web links

• María Luisa de Borbón y Vallabriga, biography - picture + info (Spanish)
• Biographies of people from the Palacio de Velada - photos + information (Spanish)