Oval bust-length miniature of Queen Maria Carolina in an oval gilt metal locket with hair entwined in 'CH', on back "II". She is half-turned to sitter's left, but facing forward. The daughter of the Empress Maria-Theresa of Austria and sister of Queen Marie-Antoinette of France (executed 1793) Maria Carolina was married to Ferdinand IV of Naples and Sicily, by whom she had many children, not all of whom survived. Far more astute than her husband - whose main interest in life was hunting - she was the effective ruler of Naples, whose interests after 1793 she turned to her own ends of revenging the death of her executed sister Marie-Antoinette. Her hatred of the French made Naples a useful British ally until 1799 when she and her husband over-reached themselves and provoked French invasion of Naples, which briefly became a revolutionary republic. This soon ended with her engagement of the support of Nelson, whom she easily manipulated (partly through Lady Hamilton). She and her husband again lost Naples to Napoleon in 1806 and she did not live to see him firmly re-established there from 1816 to his death in 1825 as Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies.