This tiny oil sketch by the Italian artist Antonio David shows Charles Edward Stuart at about five years of age. Although only a child, he is presented with the pomp and dignity appropriate to the heir apparent of a great monarchy. Dressed in elaborate court attire, he wears both the badge of the Order of the Thistle and the star and sash of the Order of the Garter, the premier orders of chivalry in Scotland and England respectively, prominently displayed on his breast. As a modello, or small-scale preparatory study for a larger painting, David’s image is unlike most other surviving Jacobite portraits. Nevertheless, with its careful rendering of Charles’s appearance, it contributes in a significant way to the formation of a distinctive identity for the young prince, one that was already beginning to define him as the hero destined to reclaim the Stuart family’s lost kingdoms.