Portraits of Mozart
According to Robert Bory, 62 portraits of Mozart and pictorial representations of all kinds exist;[1] but they vary widely in size, support, media used, style and degree of fidelity.
It is attributed to Austrian painter Pietro Antonio Lorenzoni,[12] who also painted Wolfgang's sister Maria Anna Mozart, often known today by her family name "Nannerl".
It was painted by French artist Louis Carrogis Carmontelle during the stay of the Mozart family in Paris of 1763-64,[16] part of their grand tour through most of Western Europe.
[17] That the portrait is authentic cannot be doubted, since we have Leopold Mozart's word for it in a letter he wrote home to his landlord and friend Lorenz Hagenauer (1 April 1764).
[27] It was painted in Verona between January 6–7 of 1770,[28] commissioned by Venetian tax collector Pietro Lugiati, who also housed Mozart and his father during their stay in the city.
[29] It is oil on canvas, and was previously owned by the descendants of pianist Alfred Cortot,[33] but it was sold to an anonymous art collector in 2019 at a Christie's auction house in Paris.
The friar instructed the young Mozart and helped him in being accepted as a member of the famous Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna,[45][46] one of the most respected musical institutions in Europe at the time.
[52] This family portrait shows Wolfgang and his sister Maria Anna playing four hands at the keyboard, with Leopold by the side holding his violin.
[53] The small statue of Apollo in the background symbolizes the musical nature of the Mozart family, and the book, writing ink and a quill beside Leopold reference his influential 1755 violin playing treatise Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule.
[57] It is disputed by scholars such as Simon Keefe, who claims it was created in an anonymous Salzburg workshop,[58] and George Dieter, who points to a name confusion as the origin of the supposed attribution.
[75] Lange played roles in Mozart's works, most notably the Musik zu einer Pantomime (K. 446/416d)[69] and the comic singspiel Der Schauspieldirektor (K.
Commissioned by Empress Maria Theresa, he travelled to Italy in 1768 to paint portraits of members of the Habsburg family in Milan, Parma and Florence.
[41] It was created in 1819 (28 years after Mozart's death) by Austrian painter Barbara Krafft,[105] commissioned by Joseph Sonnleithner for a portrait collection of well-known composers in the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Society of Friends of Music) in Vienna.
Hutchings praised the painting with the following words: "It is a tribute to Krafft's artistry that her work still remains one of the most highly valued portraits of her enigmatic subject".
It was supposedly painted in 1770 in Florence, where Leopold and Wolfgang encountered violinist Pietro Nardini, whom they had met at the start of their grand tour of Europe.
Giuseppe Maria Gavard des Pivets was the finance administrator of the court of Grand Duke of Tuscany Leopoldo I (later Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II).
It is oil on canvas; its earliest known owner was the writer Duchess Mechtilde Christiane Maria Lichnowsky, née Countess von und zu Arco-Zinneberg.
[138] This apparently shows Mozart looking at the viewer while wearing a valuable diamond ring, which he received as a gift from Empress Maria Theresa on 3 October 1762.
It was supposedly painted in Munich between October and November of 1790 by Austrian artist Johann Georg Edlinger, during Mozart's stay in that city just a year before his death.
In a letter to Constanze, the composer wrote that he originally wanted to stay for a single day, but the Elector asked him to remain to perform a concert for kings of the Two Sicilies Ferdinand I and Maria Carolina of Austria.
Four years later, Rainer Michaelis and Wolfgang Seiller confirmed this attribution based on biographical data of Mozart and Edlinger, as well as on a detailed comparison of the portraits.
Rudolph Angermüller and Gabriele Ramsauer questioned that the sitter was Mozart, asserting that it was instead a local businessman named Joseph Anton Steiner.
[153] In 2006, the Mozart attribution was also confirmed by four art historians at the Austrian State Gallery in Vienna: Gerbert Frodl, Sabine Grabner, Michael Krapf, and Udo Felbinger.
It is probable that Zoffany met the Mozarts during their London stay between 1764-65,[163] a time in which the artist enjoyed the patronage of King George III and Queen Charlotte, and his name is mentioned in Leopold's travel notes.
[168] The painting was owned by British art dealer Percy Moore Turner,[24] who sold it to the Mozarteum in Salzburg on 1924, claiming that the sitter was Mozart according to the singature “W.
[6][174] Erna Felmayer discovered that the sitter is actually Count Karl Maximilian Firmian, who was born the same year as Mozart and was one of his childhood friends.
[182] The work shows a young man seated at a harpsichord,[183] wearing a Chinese coat and looking at the viewer while pages of a score lie in his lap.
However, other than these mere circumstances, there is no substantial evidence that connects the boy in the picture with Mozart:[185] there are no references to the painting in the numerous letters Leopold wrote back home, nor any other clues.
Max Zenger included Jäger's copy in his list of false portraits, attacking it with relish: the work is a "paradigm example of kitsch portrayals"; and noting that even at the time of writing (1941) it is "by no means to be found solely on candy boxes.
[189] Better known as "Mozart's Last Days", this painting shows the dying composer attended by his wife Constanze and his sister-in-law Sophie Weber, with the unfinished Requiem at his feet, while his friends in the background rehearse the work.
