Portrait Galleries on Paper

The portrait collection of Emperor Francis I of Austria (1768-1835) is one of the rare examples of an aristocratic portrait collection, that has been preserved and reflects, on the one hand, the tradtion of dynastic galleries of ancestral portraits, and on the other hand in its diversity of the persons portrayed (of various social ranks and nations) the universal educational ideal of the Age of Enlightenment. The aim of this study is to shed light on the history of this remarkable example of the Habsburgian culture of collecting and to reconstruct the development of the collection at large for the first time. The focus of the analysis is on the Emperors policy of acquisition and sytematic arrangement of the portraits. The guiding research questions of the study fall into three cateogories which provide the thesis with its main structure: spheres of influence collection strategies arrangement strategies. First of all the circumstances of the formation of the collection and the development of the later Emperor as a collector of engravings is to be analysed. On the basis of archive materials on the Florentine Court it is possible to study why the Archduke planned and began the collection during his youth in Florence. It can be shown that he came into contact with works of graphics on several occasions, which might have been inspirational for the foundation oft he collection to various extents. Research into the history of the collection shed light on the origin of the portraits. The invoices of art dealers figure as a primary source in this respect, because they contain detailed lists of the engravings that have been acquired. Thus it has been possible to retrace the practice of collecting and the specific importance of networks the emperor used like agents, art dealers or artists. The third part of the thesis deals with how the portraits have been arranged and what role the Emperor himself played in the structuring and arrangement of the collection. Here the inventories kept by the Emperor and his genealogical notes both of which have been preserved in the Austrian National Library (Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung) are an excellent source. They reflect the order in which the portraits have been kept and how the structure of their organisation developed historically. By considering the Emperors own and also later approaches to systematisation it can be shown how todays classification of the portraits into reigning houses, ranks and occupations evolved. On the basis of period literature about private portrait collections of the 18th century it is to be studied to which extent the methodical aproach was in line with the approach to classification and systematization prevailing at that time. Finally the Emperors collection is studied from a comparative point of view. Taking the question of how graphic portraits originally were integrated into aristocratic print collections as a point of departure the collection of Francis I is compared to other reconstructable collections of the 18th century like those of Prince Eugene of Savoy and of Louis Philippe I, King of the French. It is to be assessed how the collection of Francis I can be positioned alongside these collections from a conceptional point of view and it is to be established how the collection is different from comparable collections of the time. For this purpose specific characteristics of the different classification systems are identified and contrasted with those of similar aristocratic classification systems. The focus here is on the question of how the concepts of arranging the portraits of aristrocratic collections are different from those of scholarly portrait collections of the 18th century.

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