German School circa 1760, follower of Martin von Meytens

Collection of the Rochechouart de Mortemart Family since the 18^th Century;

Thence by descent. 

The artist seems here to have borrowed his composition from the Portrait of Francis I by Martin van Meytens the Younger (Vienna, Kunsthistoriches Museum, Gemäldegalerie, inv. 3440), painted in about 1745, the year the Emperor was crowned. It is possible to recognize the sovereign’s richly embroidered suit à l’espagnole (in the Spanish style), the Order of the Toison d’Or hanging from his neck and his hat plumed with ostrich feathers. The Imperial crown (?) is simplified but is in the same position below the figure to the right, on a red velvet cushion. Grand-nephew on his mother’s side to Louis XIV, Francis I was only third in the succession before the death of his brothers. In 1732, he was appointed Viceroy of Hungary by Charles VI, who had brought him up as his own son at the Vienna court. He married Charles’s daughter, Archduchess Maria Theresa, in 1736, thus founding the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, which still exists. After the death of her father in 1740, Maria Theresa named her husband co-regent. The style of this portrait is typical of ceremonial portraits painted by Meytens for the Austrian aristocracy.