Maybe she had so good relationships with her daughters because herself was not loved at all by her own mother, when she was a child. Henriette of England had already a daughter and wanted a son, so, when she gave birth to Anne-Marie, she asked immediately : "It's a boy?" "No it's a girl", they said. She was furious and answered : "A girl! You can throw her into the river!"
This portrait is by Ferdinand Elle and was sent from Paris in Torino before the wedding, it was the official presentation portrait!
But Anne-Marie's father was not really content of this portrait, because he said that her daugther was more beautiful. He said to the ambassador of Savoy that he would send another portrait, by Mignard, a little later. This one was just "for the meantime".
It's today in Torino, but in a "private collection" (unfortunately).
Yes, like duchesse de Chartres, I think the more beautiful of the sisters were Marie-Louise, she was not "pretty" but so distinguinshed (I must say I don't find the exact word in english, in french the word is "racé", that means we can see on her face that she's got very illustrous birth, full-blood).
But Anne-Marie was nice too.
By the way it's funny to see how Marie-Louise and Anne-Marie had the face of their father, with just a little something of their mother. The sisters were very "mediterranean", because the duke AND the duchess of Orléans were from Medici descent.
For their half-sister Elisabeth-Charlotte, I always found her portraits were charming, I don't find her bad at all. But it's true that her mother wrote : "She has pretty much the same appearance as the Queen of Spain (Marie-Louise), if you remember ; but she's not like her at all concerning the face. She's got a beautiful skin, but all her features are ugly : a ugly nose, a big mouth, drawn eyes and a plat face..."
