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Painting, furniture and works of art from the 17th, 18th and early 19th century
This portrait by Moritz Stifter reflects the fashion for “fantasy portraits” that flourished in Europe during the second half of the 19th century. The young woman, shown in profile, wears a sumptuous Renaissance costume in emerald green velvet, embellished with pearls, gold embroidery, a pearl necklace and a ruby pendant. Her attire is crowned with an imposing tiara adorned with stones and multicoloured feathers.
Such representations were not intended to depict a real sitter, but rather to evoke an idealised vision of an aristocratic past, shaped by the historicist imagination of the 19th century. More than an individual portrait, it is a typological figure, embodying an ideal of beauty and refinement.
Stifter specialised in these alluring compositions, much appreciated by the Viennese bourgeoisie, who sought refined and decorative images blending historical evocation with a taste for luxury. This work perfectly illustrates that spirit, where painting becomes both an object of contemplation and the expression of an imagined golden age.
Born in Bohemia and the son of an engineer, Moritz Stifter was the nephew of the writer and painter Adalbert Stifter (1805–1868). After first embracing a military career, he soon turned to art. In 1882, he entered the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he joined the Antique class and studied under Carl Theodor von Piloty, a central figure of German academic painting. There he acquired a strong technical foundation and mastery of chiaroscuro in the Italian tradition.
Stifter quickly directed his work towards genre scenes and female portraits, often represented in Renaissance costumes or within an imagined Oriental setting. His approach reflects less a documentary intent than a decorative and evocative vision, meeting the taste of Munich and Viennese bourgeois circles at the end of the 19th century. Unlike some of his contemporaries devoted to ethnographic precision, Stifter cultivated an idealised and atmospheric style.
His refined interiors and compositions, midway between allegory and fantasy, embodied the fascination of his time with aristocratic nostalgia and exotic themes. In 1899, he established his studio in Haag bei Neulengbach, Lower Austria, where he continued to work until his death in 1905.
Moritz Stifter’s work remains characteristic of the fin-de-siècle Viennese taste, marked by historicism and a fascination with exoticism, in which the female figure is at once subject, ornament, and symbol of an aesthetic ideal.
