page_title: Marie-Caroline of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Duchess of Berry
section_title: Patron of the arts
hierarchical_section_title: Marie-Caroline of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Duchess of Berry / Patron of the arts
caption_attribution_description: English: The Harvest Français&#160;: La moisson
context_page_description: Marie-Caroline de Bourbon-Sicile, duchesse de Berry was an Italian princess of the House of Bourbon who married into the French royal family, and was the mother of Henri, Count of Chambord.
context_section_description: Even as a member of the royal family, the Duchess of Berry was an exceptional theatre-goer. She was the patron of the Théâtre du Gymnase, which changed its name, for a time, to the théâtre de Madame, in her honor. She attended the Odéon at least nine times during 1824 to 1828. She contributed to benefit performances, such as that of Giacomo Rossini's La dame du lac (1826), for victims of the fire at Antonio Franconi's Cirque Olympique; she contributed 500 francs.
  The Duchess of Berry and her first husband, Charles-Ferdinand d'Artois, were enthusiastic art collectors. Her sale of 1822 was novel for its catalogue which contained lithographic reproductions of all the works. Lithography, invented by Alois Senefelder, had only been fully described in 1818 in Vollstandiges Lehrbuch der Steindruckerei, translated into French in 1819. The lithographs, produced by Isidore Laurent Deroy sparked an interest in the technique as a means for reproducing art.
  She was a collector of landscapes; her collection featured at least three by Ruisdael. She had several genre scenes by Auguste-Xavier Leprince and she owned works by Jan van der Heyden, Michel Philibert Genod, François Marius Granet, Pauline Auzou, Jean-Claude Bonnefond, Charles Marie Bouton, Martin Drolling, Hortense Haudebourt-Lescot, and Achille Etna Michallon, among many others.
  The Duchess was known to patronise the Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory, commissioning notable works by Jean-Charles-François Leloy.
caption: La moisson (1822) by Auguste-Xavier Leprince, oil on canvas, 24.2 x 32.1 cm, featured in her 1822 sale
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