A famous portrait of her Maria Antoinette when they were child It has been shown to actually depict her sister, according to a new study by the BBC.
The Swiss painter Jean -Etienne Liopt had painted in 1762 the characteristic portrait of the last Queen of France, Maria Antoinette, who for years influenced the way historians saw her childhood.
But Professor Katrina Seth from the University of Oxford now believes that the work is probably depicting her older sister, Maria Carolina, who later became a queen of Naples.
It also suspects that another sketch from the same collection of Liopas, which was considered to show Maria Carolina, in fact shows the youngest Maria Antoinette.
In the portrait they have so far considered Maria Antoinette, the girl is seven years old, she holds a weaving tool and looks at the viewer with a decisive look.
Marie Antoinette portrait really sister, study finds https://t.co/R6evZfiTPA
— BBC Oxfordshire (@BBCOxford) October 12, 2025
The scholars believed that this showed that the future queen was destined for an important life.
But Professor Seth said that, although “the picture was fascinated”, something “worried her” and as she was researching her new book, which deals with Maria Antoinette’s portraits, she re -elapsed the Liotho Collection at the Museum of Art and History (MAH).
The items that led her to the conclusion
“The first element came from what they thought was a pendant in the portrait of” Maria Antoinette “,” he explained.
The girl in the sketch is wearing a medal of a particular Order of Horse Racing that was awarded to the brothers, but Maria, as the younger, had received her own almost four years after the creation of the portrait.
“I realized that she had become confused, and that the youngest child in one of the other portraits was Maria Antoinette, not Maria Carolina,” Seth said.
In the portrait that is now considered to show Ludwig’s future wife, the girl wears special earrings and holds a rose.
Seth said she later found another image of Maria Antoinette with the same earrings, while the roses were a “recurring pattern” in many portraits in her life.
Mark-Polivier Valler, director of the MAh Museum, said: “Although these impressive portraits have been exposed many times over the last 250 years, it will be something special to finally see Maria Antoinette as she was really, and not confusing her with her sister.”
Maria Antoinette was born in Austria in 1755 and was sent to France to become the wife of the future King Louis.
She was beheaded in 1793, at the age of 37, along with her husband, at the culmination of the French Revolution.