Abstract

Abstract During the reign of Maria Theresa (1740-1780) a reassessment of the role women played in a closed society occurred. The main question this article aims to answer is how one can identify these changes by analysing images with high symbolic value, which celebrated and presented Maria Theresa in instances of official relevance, images produced in a period when nations were designing themselves. The present article seeks to underline some of the most representative ideas on how the monarchical identity of Maria Theresa was constructed in art to serve political and propagandistic functions, in an age considered the richest in formal expressions, that is the Baroque, or the ‘Late Baroque’. Hereditary successor to a long line of Holy Roman emperors, Maria Theresa changed the perspective on monarchy and constructed a different identity, that of female agency. Metaphorical images and realism define the analysed portraits in order to demonstrate how the political and the natural body of the monarch combined to illustrate power and aristocratic descent. In my study, the theoretical works on the role Maria Theresa played as female heir to the throne of the Habsburg Empire (rex femineus) are to be viewed as main sources of the imagery surrounding her natural and political body. What I propose is an inquiry into the iconographic representations of Maria Theresa’s body of state, which was public and eternal, and thus privileged as a site of discourse for absolutist statehood.

Highlights

  • A true icon of the Habsburg Empire, Maria Theresa promoted an artistic legacy that is centred on imperial identity as never before

  • The sovereign inherited the title from her father, emperor Charles VI, hereditary successor to a long line of Holy Roman emperors (Pick, 1966; Roider, 1973; Varga, 2021; Yonan, 2011, among others), who managed to rule over the vast Habsburg territories, the Banat province being part of Hungary in that period

  • This article does not seek to provide a complete analysis of documented monarchical identity, but to introduce some notions regarding the artistic patronage of Maria Theresa in the Habsburg imperial province of the Banat, and how what is defined as political body constructed official iconography as political discourse

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Summary

Introduction

A true icon of the Habsburg Empire, Maria Theresa promoted an artistic legacy that is centred on imperial identity as never before. This article does not seek to provide a complete analysis of documented monarchical identity, but to introduce some notions regarding the artistic patronage of Maria Theresa in the Habsburg imperial province of the Banat, and how what is defined as political body constructed official iconography as political discourse. Much of the heritage mentioned has already been analysed and published, new means of interpretation are to be followed in order to underline some key concepts of Maria Theresa’s iconography This period ushered modernity in the Banat, a periphery area of the Habsburg Empire, and the official art was programmatic in the sense that it promoted the idea of an official ruler that considered herself legitimized by her acts and administrative achievements to practise artistic propaganda. Simple patterns of European descent herald the change in the empress’s image, though she never visited this part of Hungary

Discussion on the concept of kingship and gender roles
Imperial identity seen through art
Conclusions
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