Focus Scientific Research
Austrian Portraiture in the 18th century. The collection of the Elisabethinen convent in Klagenfurt
Eva Kernbauer
Institute for Art History Project partners: Convent “Elisabethinen Klagenfurt”;
Institute for Conservation and Restoration, University of Applied Arts, Vienna
The project
aims to investigate approximately 135 portraits from the collection of the Elisabethinen convent in Klagenfurt bequeathed
by the Austrian archduchess Maria Anna (1738-1789). The convolute consists of oil paintings and pastels showing Habsburg aristocrats
and contemporary clerics, including an ancestral gallery as well as a depiction of Maria Theresia and Franz Stephan in carnival
costumes. An extraordinary density of children’s portraits further characterizes the collection. Between 2010 and 2012 the
works were, for the first time, documented, inventoried and subjected to restoration and conservation measures by the Institute
for Conservation and Restoration at the University of Applied Arts. The current project affiliated to the Department of Art
History addresses a profound study of the collection’s art-historical and cultural contexts.
The project’s main
objectives are a contextualization of the artworks within regional and transregional 18th-century art production and distribution,
an attribution to artists and workshops, and a reconstruction of the history of the collection before and after the accession
of Maria Anna’s estate by the Elisabethinen convent after her death in 1789. On the one hand, the study attempts to reconstruct
the original structure of the collection as well as the provenances of the individual objects, and on the other hand their
historical presentation at the Viennese court, respectively at the residency in Klagenfurt, in order to describe the representational
and memorial functions of the paintings and pastels.
The role of the archduchess herself will be also considered
from a feminist perspective, as she acted not only as collector but also as a well-recognized engraver and painter. From a
socio-historical perspective the project attempts to examine the Habsburg environment and to analyze the children’s portraits
within the changing notions of childhood in the 18th century.
Finally, the specific qualities of the Klagenfurt
collection will be addressed in terms of 18th-century genre conventions: the portraits partially quote large-format family-portraits
or sections of full-figure paintings by well-known 18th-century artists. These links to specific conventions and functions
questions more conventional conceptions of portraiture as a direct, at most idealized, rendition of physical appearance: depictions
that at first sight look authentic, may turn out as iterated and only slightly varied.