Ulrica Eleonora, later Queen of Sweden (1656-1693)

This miniature is a painted in watercolour on vellum, rather than in the enamel medium in which the artist, Pierre Signac, first made his name. He was invited to Stockholm in 1647 by Queen Christina of Sweden, and there met Alexander Cooper, younger brother of Samuel Cooper, who taught him the art of painting miniatures in watercolour on vellum, a method which Signac turned to increasingly after Cooper's death in 1660. The present miniature is a portrait of Ulrica Eleonora of Denmark painted from life at the age of 12 and is a version of a miniature in the National Museum of Finland, Helsinki (no. 5). Ulrica Eleonora, fourth daughter and sixth child of Frederick III and Sophia Amalia of Denmark, married, in 1680, Charles XI, King of Sweden. Inscribed by a nineteenth-century hand over an earlier pencil inscription: 'Wilhelmina Erneste (Princess of Denmark) Wife of Charles Elector Palatine of the Rhine b. 1650-d. 1705)