Chevalier Antoine de Favray was a French painter, noted for his portraits of personalities of the Ottoman Empire, as well as paintings of Grand Masters of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
In 1762 Antoine de Favray moved to Constantinople like several other European artist of his time did too, where he spent nine years. During his stay in Constantinople he was painting numerous genre scenes of the everyday life in Turkey under Louis XVI and he also depicted locals and foreign dignitaries. Two portraits are especially notable, one is of the French ambassador Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes (1717-1787) who was living in Constantinople between 1754 and 1768 and the second, that the painter painted two years later, of the ambassador’s wife. The painting depicts the native-born Annette Duvivier de Testa (1730-1798) who became the ambassador's wife. She had previously been married to Testa, a merchand and member of a prominent Genoese family who settled in Pera for several centuries. Favray portrayed both the ambassador and ambassador’s wife in a rich Turkish dress.
French ambassador Charles Gravier de Vergennes in Ottoman dress, painted by Antoine de Favray, 1766, Pera Museum, Istanbul.
The Mirabita Sisters, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Antoine de Favray - Portrait of the Countess of Vergennes in Turkish Attireontes of Vergennes in Turkish Gown, Pera Museum, Istambul
Audience of Charles de Vergennes with Sultan Osman III in 1755.

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