Father, dear father, you’ve done me great wrong
You have married me to a boy who is too young
I’m twice twelve and he is but fourteen
He’s young, but he’s daily growing.
Maria Leszczyńska might have sung this old Scottish ballad. When she was married to Louis XV in 1725, he was fifteen, and she was twenty-three. Nevertheless the marriage was happy for quite a while, it was eight years till the king took his first mistress.
This portrait was made in the year after the wedding by court painter François Albert Stiemart.
