(Rome 1731–1818 Warsaw)
Portrait of Prince Albert Casimir of Sachsen-Teschen (1738–1822), three-quarter length, wearing armour, the Order of the Golden Fleece and the Order of the White Eagle of Poland, holding a Field Marshal’s baton,
oil on canvas, 92.5 x 75.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
possibly Schloss Hof until dispersal of the collection in the late 19th century;
Private collection, France;
art market, France;
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Georg Lechner and Konrad Niemira for endorsing the attribution and for their help in cataloguing the present painting.

On the 6th of April 1766, Albert of Saxony, the new Duke of Teschen, a cadet prince of the house of Wettin, who was without any prospects of inheriting money or power, married Empress Maria Theresa’s favourite daughter, Archduchess Maria Christina in Schloss Hof, near Vienna. Some historians called this match an ‘almost morganatic marriage’, so far above her husband was the social rank of the Archduchess in the spheres of dynastic hierarchy. The couple was generously provided for by the Empress. Albert was given an unprecedented number of decorations and promoted to Field Marshal and Governor of Hungary in order to make the marriage appear more equal. However, the wedding contract precisely stated that Albert married into the Imperial family, and not his wife into the house of Wettin.

Maria Theresa wanted the couple to live on a grand scale. As the Empresses’ favourite daughter, Maria Christina was the only one of her children who was allowed to marry for love. The marriage elevated Albert from a minor princeling receiving an Imperial apanage at court to one of the main landowners of the empire. Now financially well provided for the artistically inclined couple could satisfy their insatiable taste for collecting. Ultimately, their legacy can still be enjoyed today, as Albert’s unrivalled collection of works on paper was preserved and is still housed in his former city palace and museum that bears his name, the Albertina in Vienna.

This elegant portrait is a fascinating and art historically, as well as historically significant rediscovery. It is a painting that was most likely commissioned by the Imperial court to commemorate the marriage of the young prince with the Archduchess, and it can be dated to a relatively narrow period of time in the early months of 1766. It also affords the possibility to furthering the knowledge of Marcello Bacciarelli’s Viennese sojourn in 1764–1766.

I. The portrait, its dating and its history

The present painting is, in its pictorial language, a relatively traditional work for its date of execution in 1766. It follows many iconographical traditions developed first by the French painters of the Grand Siècle that later became fashionable at most European courts, and in this, the composition appears ultimately indebted to the Dresden court painter Louis de Sylvestre, but also to the Viennese Martin van Mytens. However, it is the lightness of touch and the very elegant composition that reveals a different painterly approach. Standing in front of a tree trunk, with a battle in the background, Prince Albert of Saxony is depicted as an Imperial Field Marshal, holding the marshals’ baton. He was promoted to field marshal by decree on the 26th of December 1765 (see F. X. Malcher, Herzog Albrecht zu Sachsen-Teschen bis zu seinem Antritt der Statthalterschaft in Ungarn, 1738–1766, Vienna 1894, p. 158).

He is wearing a magnificently decorated armour, with polished steel, decorated richly with alternating bands of gold. Bacciarelli, especially in his later historicising portraits of the historical kings of Poland, would often use this highly sophisticated combination of gold and polished metal in depicting armour. As with these later armours, it is safe to assume that the present armour is also a free invention by the artist. Albert wears a combination of chivalric orders that also allow a precise dating of the portrait. Around his neck he displays a magnificent Toison of the Order of the Golden Fleece. Surprisingly, as he was only a cadet prince, he already was a knight of that order before he began his courtship with the Archduchess, but of the Spanish branch that had passed to the house of Bourbon after the war of the Spanish succession. Charles III of Spain was Albert’s brother-in-law, married to his sister Maria Amalia. The King had created him knight of the order in 1738. The magnificent, brilliant studded ‘Prunkstück’, was a wedding present given to the Prince by the King in late 1765.

Albert also wears the blue sash and cross of the Order of the White Eagle of Poland, as most members of the house of Saxony did. However, the present portrait is the last commemoration of this tradition. In an (undated) letter to King Charles III of Spain, Albert asks for permission, since the Empress had awarded him the Order of St. Stephen of Hungary, to wear this order together with the Golden Fleece, just as he had worn it with the White Eagle, which he would now renounce: ‘Je Supplié V. M. de designer me permettre que je joigne le dit ordre a la toison, a la place de celui de Pologne, que j’ai toujors porté avec celle-ci, et que je n’aurai pas de peine a quitter pour cet effet, puisqu’il n’est pas du tout du notre famille, mais d’un pays qui nous est devenu tout a fait etranger’ (alluding to Stanislaus Poniatowski having become King of Poland in 1764, ending the house of Wettins rule over Poland). King Charles granted permission in a letter dated Madrid, 11th December 1765.

Another iconographical detail regarding the date of the painting can be interpreted in the black jabot, or necktie, the prince is wearing, and which could be due to official court mourning following the death of Emperor Francis Stephen on the 18th August 1765, which was still observed even during the marriage ceremony. The elaborate, gold trimmed white sash around the prince’s waist was a formula employed by Bacciarelli in several other of his early works, most notably in the portrait of Count Brühl, of which a replica, today in Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, gives a good impression. Based on the combination of chivalric orders and the chain of events leading up to the marriage in April 1766, the portrait can be dated to early 1766. Albert apparently wanted to be depicted in all the splendour of his newly-acquired rank, including for the last time before he renounced it, the White Eagle, which was a symbol of his dynastic inheritance as a prince of Saxony- Poland. This makes the portrait a significant historical document, especially as no other portrait dating from these important years in his life appear to have survived. Schloss Hof, where the marriage was celebrated, was not only one of the Empress’s favourite palaces, it also became a beloved residence for the young couple, when Albert became Governor in Pressburg. Interestingly, right until the dispersion of most of the castle’s contents in the late nineteenth century, art historical guides praised, apart from the famous full-scale family group portraits in one of the Salons that have been preserved to this day, a pair of medium sized portraits of the ducal couple, of whom no trace remains. They are described as ‘Kniestücke’ (knee-length) however this might have been an imprecise description.

II. A rare work by Marcello Bacciarelli, the ‘Più bravo pittore che fosse in Vienna’

The death of the Emperor in the summer of 1765 meant the end of a political era, from the late Baroque imperial policies dominated by the ratification of the pragmatic sanction, towards the enlightened rule of Joseph II. This period was also marked by an artistic ‘interregnum’. Martin van Mytens had dominated court portraiture with his Baroque ‘Grand Manner’ for the previous twenty years, and now there was an advance towards academic neoclassicism. 

Marcello Bacciarelli had established himself as a well know artist at the courts of Dresden and Warsaw and was in Vienna, from April 1764 to October 1766 (see K. Niemira, Più bravo pittore che fosse in Vienna, or Marcello Bacciarelli on the Habsburg Court and in Viennese Salons, in: Journal of the National Museum in Warsaw, New Series, 2019, no. 8, 44, pp. 209–220, p. 209). Even though he mentions in letters that he was active for the imperial court (in one letter even calling himself, after reporting of a commission to paint the imperial couple for the King of Denmark: ‘Più bravo pittore che fosse in Vienna’), at present only one portrait is known for the period he was in Vienna which is the portrait of Archduchess Maria Christina dressed in red, today in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (on loan from a private collection). In a letter dated 18th of January 1766, Maria Christina tells her fiancé that she awaits the arrival of Bacciarelli to paint her portrait, and that it was her intention to be painted wearing red, Albert’s favourite colour. This letter is significant as Baciarelli is mentioned in the tone of familiarity, without introduction and it appears as if Albert already knew the artist. In fact it is possible that it was Albert who introduced Bacciarelli, active in his native court of Dresden, to Vienna. That Bacciarelli appears to have prepared for the commission is documented by a drawing by Bacciarelli, today in Warsaw, Muzeum Narodowe. This appears to be a copy of a portrait of the Archduchess, either by Mytens or the Master of the Archduchess Portraits, which is today in Schönbrunn Palace, Vienna (see A. Pieńkos, Vienna 1764–1766: Bacciarelli alla corte imperiale, fra Dresda e Varsavia, in: A. Pieńkos/M. Smoliński [eds.], Intorno a Marcello Bacciarelli: italiani nella Varsavia dei lumi, Warsaw 2019, pp. 67–77, ill. 48, 49, 50).

The present portrait is arguably much more traditional than the portrait of Archduchess Maria Christina in the Kunsthistorisches Museum. However, they are similar in format, and since Maria Christina faces left, whereas the Duke in the present composition faces right, the portraits may have been intended as a pair. The drawing after the Schönbrunn portrait demonstrates that Bacciarelli may have originally planned a much more traditional portrait type for Maria Christina.The two portraits may have hung together in Schloss Hof, as the pair described in period guides.

Konrad Niemira has recently suggested that Bacciarelli may have painted the large unsigned painting (400 x 480 cm) in the Hofburg, Vienna, illustrating a performance of Christof Willibald Gluck’s opera Parnasso confuso that was shown for the festivities surrounding Josephs II marriage to Maria Josepha of Bavaria on the 24th January 1765. It includes portraits of four Archduchesses who had performed that day. This painting has traditionally been attributed to Johann Franz Greipel. It is of interest that Bacciarelli’s son mentions a large-scale portrait of four Archduchesses, of which, until Niemira’s recent proposal, no trace had remained (see op. cit. Niemira, 2019, pp. 209–220).

The portraits under discussion are similar in the elegant handling of paint, the soft, almost pastel like colours and discreet use of light. Bacciarelli’s early works, including the present painting, feature these characteristics, as can also be seen in the Portrait of Izabela Lubomirska, dated 1757 and conserved in the Wilanów Palace, Warsaw (oil on canvas, 139 x 101 cm).