Portrait of the Archduchess Maria Theresia
by DAFFINGER, Moritz Michael, Oil on canvas, 77 x 63 cm
The little archduchess (1816-1867), later queen of Naples and Sicily (1837—1860), was portrayed when she was approximately three years old. Maria Theresia was the daughter of Archduke Karl (1771-1847), the victor of Aspern, and of Archduchess Henriette of Nassau-Weilburg (1797—1829).
The portrait is a slightly modified copy of a painting by Thomas Lawrence in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. In the copy, which he is thought to have executed in 1819, Daffinger adopted the English manner of painting, but deviated from the original in what the portrait expresses and in the execution of the park landscape in the background.