The Tansey Miniatures Foundation

Die Miniatur Über den Künstler

The Tansey Miniatures Foundation

DE
The Miniature About the Artist

Marie-Louise, Empress of the French

Austrian

Marie-Louise (1791–1847) was the oldest daughter of the Austrian Emperor Francis I and his second wife, Maria Theresa of Naples and Sicily. In 1810, she became the second wife of Napoleon I, who for years had been a bitter enemy of Austria. In Bonaparte’s eyes, her high birth and the connection with the House of Habsburg were the reasons for this choice. It made him a relation of the greatest ruling families in Europe, which was intended to legitimise his position and, above all, that of his descendants. In 1811, Marie-Louise bore him the successor he had longed for. 

The miniature shows the empress in her wedding dress, but without its diamond ornamentation, and she is not wearing her jewellery or her tiara. The artist based the portrait on a miniature of the empress that Isabey had painted in 1810, which shows her in a whole-figure view in front of her throne.1 Around her neck, she is wearing a miniature of her husband, which was also painted by Isabey and was presented to her by Marshal Berthier at the official betrothal in Vienna. 

B. P. 

1 The counterpart of the miniature shows Napoleon, also in his wedding costume. The emperor ordered both of these unusual miniatures from Isabey in 1810 as gifts for his father-in-law, Francis I. Isabey had previously presented them at the Paris Salon in the same year (both in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). It is, however, possible that the painter of this miniature was not working from Isabey’s original but from a print by André Joseph Mécou.