Az ifjú Mária Terézia portréja Martin van Meytenstől

Buzási, Enikő (2014) Az ifjú Mária Terézia portréja Martin van Meytenstől. Művészettörténeti Értesítő, 63 (1). pp. 159-166. ISSN 0027-5247

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Abstract

The picture first cropped up at the auction of the Ernst Museum in Budapest in April 1929 as the portrait of the mother of Maria Theresa, Empress Elisabeth Christine. Its pendant was also put up for auction on that occasion, but its whereabouts are unknown since then. The provenance of the pair of pictures was not specified in the catalogue. The portrait of Maria Theresa is today privately owned in Budapest. It is composed in an oval layout, is unsigned with traces of a wax seal on the back. The figure of the archduchess was painted by Meytens, some background elements are perhaps by an assistant. It is unknown whether an engraving had ever been made after the painting. Four versions of the picture are known today. Only one of them is by Meytens; it was donated to the Gripsholm collection by a Swedish collector around 1820. Also unsigned, it features a later inscription with the date 1741. The picture in Sweden is smaller than the Budapest variant and the cut of the figure is also smaller, showing the sitter only to the waist. The layout is rectangular, the pilaster on the right is missing. Our knowledge about the Meytens pictures can be refined with the help of the copy made in Vienna by a painter of Italian origin, Gabriel Mathaei (Matthäi, Mathei, Mattei), who was employed by the imperial treasury. This variant (Florence, Uffizi) has an inscription on the back in Italian and a signature. Its colours are identical to the Budapest painting, but it shows Maria Theresa against a plain background. According to literature, the picture got to Florence together with its pair when Francis Stephen Duke of Lorraine and his wife, as the new rulers of Tuscany, paid a visit to their new seat: the archducal couple left Vienna in December 1738. Since Mathaei painted the portraits taken to Florence as a pair, it is presumable that the portrait of Francis Stephen of Lorraine was also painted after Meytens's original picture. This is a clue regarding the pendant of the Budapest picture, which must have been identical with the Florence painting. The Florentine portraits, as well as the representations of Maria Theresa feature the ducal crown of Lorraine, which indicates that the Meytens prototype must have been painted in 1736-1737. (Francis Stephen of Lorraine's statement of abdicationt the Duchy of Lorraine: February 1737.) The most accurate copy of the Meytens picture has cropped up recently in the art trade of Bamberg. It shows Maria Anna Sophia von Sachsen, wife of the Bavarian elector Maximilian III, attributed to the workshop of Georg Desmarées and dated around 1765. This picture, which is identical down to minor details, was probably painted after a variant of Meytens's picture which had ended up in Munich. The mother of the electress was a cousin of Maria Theresa, so the Meytens picture must have arrived in the Bavarian court in connection with Maria Anna Sophia's marriage (1747). The Bamberg portrait (painted in Munich) is a rectangular composition similar to the one in Gripsholm but it also includes a background element that only the Budapest copy features. A poor copy by a Bavarian painter of the work attributed to the Desmarées workshop was auctioned off in Geneva a few years ago as the portrait of Maria Amalia Josepha, electress of Bavaria who lived a generation earlier. In the exploration of the connections between the variants yet another detail has importance. In the Budapest picture the sleeve of Maria Theresa's dress is adorned with a brooch below which the sleeve opens out and turns back to reveal the white lining. Except for the Gripsholm version, this detail is shown in every variant. The mentioned differences do not provide sufficient ground to identify either the Gripsholm or the Budapest picture as the prototype of the known variants of the work. The web of relations and differences suggests that there existed a further (first?) version which included all the details of the Budapest painting, which showed the figure down to beneath the waist but whose composition was rectangular like the Gripsholm piece. Whether this was the composition that arrived in Munich in 1747 cannot be ascertained. At any rate, the high-quality Budapest painting which probably came to Hungary as the property of a Hungarian aristocrat in the early 20th century shows the painter's idea in its fullest form.

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