The portrait has been identified traditionally as Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie), elder son of Prince James Francis Edward Stuart. However, comparisons with a recently discovered portrait of Charles Edward from the same period and another portrait of his younger brother, Henry Benedict Stuart, indicate that MM48 is a portrait of the latter. The artist is unknown, although he probably worked in the circle of the French painter Louis Gabriel Blanchet, whose practice was based in Rome.

One factor which may have led to the identification of the subject of the present portrait as Charles Edward Stuart is the martial aspect of the subject, who wears an elaborately gilded suit of armour over which is draped the blue sash of the Order of the Garter. Significantly, another portrait until recently also considered to be of Charles Edward, but now revealed as Henry Benedict, depicts the subject wearing armour and the sash of the Order of the Garter: a pastel portrait, it is by the French artist Maurice Quentin de la Tour (fig. 1) and was apparently made in France shortly after Charles Edward’s attempt to seize the English throne. In addition to these two portraits of Henry Benedict in armour there is at least one other, by the Italian artist Giorgio Domenico Duprà, which was commissioned in Paris by Charles Edward in 1744 (National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, PGL 1607). That portrait had a matching pendant of Charles Edward, which is now untraced.