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The Glorification of the Union of the Houses of Hapsburg and Lorraine
Creator
Franz Anton MaulbertschAustrian Artist · 1724–1796
All works by this person →Franz Anton Maulbertsch first studied painting with his father, then began his formal training at the *Kaiserliche Akademie* (Imperial Academy) in Vienna at the age of fifteen. He spent his career painting large-scale decorative fresco cycles for royalty and the clergy throughout his native Austria. He portrayed elaborate religious, mythological, and historical subjects on enormous ceilings of chu
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- 1775
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Culture
- Austrian
- Department
- Paintings
- Institution
- Getty Museum
In this illusionistic ceiling painting, figures and objects are foreshortened so that they actually seem to exist in the space above the viewer. The impression is one of infinite receding distance. Against a blue sky, putti and other seemingly weightless figures float on clouds and hover in mid-air. Light green, blue, yellow, gold, red, and orange colors blend harmoniously to create an effect of dazzling brilliance. Painted as the final model for the ceiling fresco of the great hall in the imperial palace in Innsbruck, Austria, this allegory represents two marriages between the families of Hapsburg and Lorraine. The modello celebrates Hapsburg Empress Maria Theresa's union of forty years earlier with Frans Stephen of Lorraine. Also honored is an even earlier marriage between the grandfather of Frans Stephan and one of the empress's paternal ancestors. Franz Anton Maulbertsch depicts the latter couple on the two medallions carried aloft by winged figures. In a triumphal carriage below, two figures--allegorical personifications of the two families--grasp hands while a host of angels and other symbolic figures look on approvingly.
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