Joseph II, Roman-German Emperor

This enamel portrait, which was meticulously painted and created sophisticatedly with soft colours, came as a work of an unknown artist into the Tansey Collection. Only when de-framed in the course of its restoration did d’Argent’s signature come to light, as it was written in fine letters on the reverse along the picture margin.

The artist painted the portrait of Emperor Joseph II from a model that originated around 1780. It corresponds to a type found in many portraits – also in a miniature from the estate of the House of Habsburg.¹ The sovereign is wearing a uniform, the green tunic with red collar known from several pictures, the cross and the red-white-red medal ribbon of the Austrian Military Maria Theresa Order as well as the star of the grand cross of the Royal Hungarian Order of Saint Stephen. He is wearing a medal, the Order of the Golden Fleece, as a buttonhole decoration.

Extremely few works by d’Argent are known. Two enamel portraits of Charles Eugene of Württemberg (1728 –1793) – very similar except for the different uniform – are located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and in the Musée du Louvre, Paris,² and another one of Emperor Joseph II – possibly the present miniature – had formerly been in the Lenoir Collection.³ The Stuttgart-born Adam Ludwig d’Argent apparently had French ancestors. It is conceivable that they were Huguenots who had fled their home country after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

B. P.