Portrait of Maria Theresia, Queen of Saxony

This lithographic portrait of Maria Theresa (or Maria Theresia), Queen of Saxony (1767-1827) belongs to a series of portraits of figures at the Saxon court in Dresden that Ludwig Theodor Zöllner produced after a design by Carl Christian Vogel von Vogelstein. Dated 1829, the print faithfully reproduces, in the same orientation, a drawing Vogel made in 1827, in the final year of Maria Theresa's life, which in turn relates directly to Vogel's own painted portrait of the queen (the primary version of which is in the National Gallery Prague) also dating to 1827--the year of the her ascension to the throne, just six months before her death.

This print was produced and circulated in the wake of a turbulent period that witnessed the Napoleonic Wars, the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, and, eventually, the establishment of the German Confederation. The Kingdom of Saxony, which had fallen under French control during the wars, emerged much diminished, with sixty percent of its territory ceded to Prussia at the Congress of Vienna. Against continual debate about the political and religious borders of the Saxon state, visual representations of Maria Theresa--daughter of former Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II--may have held special significance.