Study of Archduke Franz Karl

Maria Theresa and Franz Stephan are known to have had an astonishingly harmonious marriage. The couple knew each other from childhood, and as she grew up Maria Theresa developed a great affection for the Lotharingian prince who was nine years her senior and to whom she had been promised since she was five years old.

Maria Theresa utilized her role as mother of a prolific brood of children, stylizing herself as the ‘Mother of her country’. The image of the resolute monarch who ruled with maternal common sense over her lands like a large family is still common in popular accounts of the period to this day.

Opposite the family portrait are likenesses of the women who played a significant role in Maria Theresa’s life. To the right of the mirror hangs a portrait of her mother Elisabeth Christine, and to the left a likeness of Countess Fuchs, once the monarch’s governess and later her closest confidante.

Other portraits in this room depict Maria Theresa’s sister Maria Anna and her husband Alexander of Lorraine, the brother of Maria Theresa’s husband Franz Stephan.

The small portraits to the right of the window – including the well-known image of the imperial family celebrating the Feast of St Nicholas, and Joseph visiting his beloved spouse Isabella at her lying-in after the birth of their daughter – are yet another example of art made by Maria Theresa’s children and children-in-law. They were painted by Archduchess Marie Christine, the most artistically talented of her daughters, and Isabella of Bourbon-Parma, the first wife of Joseph II.