Notes This miniature has been mistakenly described as a portrait of the empress Maria Ludovika (1787–1816), who married Franz II (1768–1835) of Austria in 1808. It is instead a reduced version of the portrait of the empress Maria Louisa by Füger of which the prime version shows her holding a miniature of her husband, Leopold II [published in Ernst Lemberger, "Portrait Miniatures of Five Centuries," London, n.d., colorpl. 9]. In that miniature the empress wears an ermine-lined cloak. There is another miniature ascribed to Füger in which she wears the same slashed sleeves and her husband's portrait pinned to her breast [published in Ferdinand Laban, "Heinrich Friedrich Füger, der Porträtminiaturist," in Jahrbuch der Königlich Preuszischen Kunstsammlungen 26 (1905), fig. 19]. [see Ref. Reynolds and Baetjer 1996]
Provenance Therese Mayr (in 1907); [Walter Ephron, New York , until 1941; sold to MMA]
Exhibition History New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Four Centuries of Miniature Painting," January 19–March 19, 1950, unnumbered cat. (p. 5).
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Eighteenth-Century Woman," December 12, 1981–September 5, 1982, unnumbered cat. (p. 60, as "Portrait of a Swedish (?) Lady").
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "European Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," November 5, 1996–January 5, 1997, no. 112.
References Eduard Leisching. Die Bildnis-Miniatur in Oesterreich von 1750 bis 1850 . Vienna, 1907, p. 239, no. 60, pl. XVII, as Empress Maria Ludovika of Austria; dates it about 1790–92.European Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art . Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1996, pp. 12, 14, 124, no. 112, colorpl. 112 and ill. p. 124, give 1790, the year in which Maria Louisa became Holy Roman Empress, as the approximate date of this miniature.
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