Habsburg Court Painter, circa 1550

Portrait of Emperor Frederick III (1415–1493, reigned from 1452 on) in profile,
indistinctly signed: Jacob Attg.. (?) and dated 1552 on the reverse,
bearing an elaborate monogram on the reverse,
oil on panel, 40 x 25 cm, framed

We are grateful to Bernd Konrad for his help in cataloguing the present painting.

This highly unusual portrait of the aging first Emperor of the House of Habsburg is an interesting rediscovery. Three other paintings are known that depict the Emperor similarly dressed and in profile. A variant, possibly a copy after the present painting, is conserved in Schloss Ambras, Innsbruck (see E. Buchner, Das deutsche Bildnis der Spätgotik und der frühen Dürerzeit, Berlin 1953, p. 121, cat. no. 135a, fig. 2). Buchner attributes the Ambras portrait to the Habsburg Master, an anonymous follower of Michael Pacher active as a court painter in Tyrol in the first half of the sixteenth century, or his studio. The present painting could possibly have originated from the same circle, and the signature on the reverse of the coniferous panel might help identify the anonymous master or one of his pupils. Interestingly, another depiction showing the emperor in profile and wearing the strange pearl-studded cap is integrated into a major work by the elusive Habsburg Master, the Belvedere Adoration fragment (Belvedere, Vienna, figs. 1), whilst the Master of Frankfurt integrated it into an Epiphany (Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, see E. Buchner, op. cit., p. 116, fig. 28). The present painting appears to be the most accomplished version and could have originated from the circle of artists such as the Habsburg Master. It is impossible to determine whether it represents the prime model or is the most accomplished record of an early prototype now lost. The complex monogram on the verso of the panel could point to a commission from the imperial household, as it resembles the intellectual riddles that were very fashionable after Emperor Frederick’s long reign. His once mysterious devise ‘AEIOU’ and his own highly elaborate monogram – very close to the one on the back of the present panel – are Frederick’s most famous trademarks associated with a scholarly sphere that followed the humanist ideal of the Renaissance.

Frederick was the penultimate emperor to be crowned by the Pope, and the last to be crowned in Rome. He was the first Habsburg emperor and also the first to use Vienna as his residence. He is a rare case of a monarch ceding power deliberately – he resigned three years before his death to pursue his intellectual passions and had ruled jointly with his son for ten years by the time he died. He was the longest-reigning German monarch when in 1493, he was succeeded by his son Maximilian I. During his reign, Friedrich concentrated on re-uniting the Habsburg hereditary lands of Austria and took a lesser interest in imperial affairs. Nevertheless, by his dynastic entitlement to Hungary as well as by the Burgundian inheritance, he laid the foundations for the later Habsburg Empire.