The beloved family

Emphasizing the continuity of their rule was a matter of primary concern to the Habsburgs. Genealogy was also employed in the production of art as a means of reinforcing claims to power. Ancestral halls, family trees, festivities held to mark weddings, births, baptisms, coronations and deaths – they were all intended to refer to the ‘origin’ of their legitimation as rulers and its associated ‘rights’. This notion of deriving claims to power from (fictitious) genealogies was undermined with the spread of Enlightenment ideas as it offended against the principle of equality. The pictorial propaganda was thus adjusted: it was no longer inherited rights or divine election that were the focus of representation but the abilities and virtues, and specifically the exemplary fulfilment of a ruler’s duties which distinguished them from their subjects.

Criticism of inherited aristocratic privileges did not cease. One of the most vehement attacks on them was made by the Enlightenment scholar and advisor to Maria Theresa, Joseph von Sonnenfels, in his speech Das Bild des Adels (The Image of the Nobility) given to the aristocratic alumni of the Imperial-Royal Savoy Academy in 1767.Under Maria Theresa the function of images of the ruling family changed fundamentally. Images of fecundity emphasized the permanence and continuity of the dynasty, which had seemed endangered by the extinction of the male line of the Habsburgs with her father, Charles VI. As the registers of the Kammerzahlamt (‘Chamber Paymaster's Office’) attest, from 1750 onwards the number of commissions for family portraits increased dramatically. The gallery of ancestors was replaced with images of the nuclear family.

The great family portraits commissioned by Maria Theresa reflect a turning away from the formal conventions of official state portraits. Nonetheless, these portraits also fulfil a political function: the representation of the family becomes programmatic, seeking to reinforce its ties and existence.

Maria Theresa also used such images to keep herself informed about the development of her children after they had married and left Vienna, commissioning small-format portraits of the families at their various courts. Family portraits such as these influenced later representations of middle-class families.