Maria Louisa (1745–1792), Holy Roman Empress, German Queen, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, and Grand Duchess of Tuscany

Born in Heilbronn, Swabia, Füger made extended visits to Dresden, Vienna, and Rome (1776–83) before settling permanently in Vienna, where he became the most eminent miniaturist of the Austrian school. He made numerous portraits of members of the imperial family and the Viennese aristocracy. He was appointed assistant director of the Academy in 1783 and director of the Imperial Gallery in 1806. Füger was also a distinguished and successful painter in oils and pastels.

The 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 (Ernst Lemberger, Portrait Miniatures of Five Centuries, London, [1913], 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 (Ferdinand Laban, "Heinrich Friedrich Füger, der Porträtminiaturist," Jahrbuch der Königlich Preuszischen Kunstsammlungen 26 [1905], fig. 19).

Maria Louisa of Spain (1745–1792), daughter of Charles III, king of Spain and of Naples and Sicily, married in 1765 Leopold (1747–1792), grand duke of Tuscany, becoming archduchess of Austria and in 1790—the approximate date of this miniature—Holy Roman Empress.

[2016; adapted from Reynolds and Baetjer 1996]

Therese Mayr (in 1907); [Walter Ephron, New York , until 1941; sold to The Met]

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.

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.

Graham Reynolds with the assistance of Katharine Baetjer. 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.