The celebrity monarch: Empress Elisabeth and the modern female portrait

Abstract

"Empress Elisabeth of Austria, wife of Habsburg Emperor Francis Joseph I, was celebrated as the most beautiful woman in Europe. Glamorous painted portraits by Franz Xaver Winterhalter and widely collected photographs spread news of her beauty, and the twentieth-century German-language film trilogy Sissi cemented this legacy. Despite the enduring fascination with the empress, art historians have never considered Elisabeth's role in producing her public portraiture. With resources ranging from the paintings of Gustav Klimt and Elisabeth's private collection of celebrity photography to twenty-first century collages and films by T. J. Wilcox, The celebrity monarch positions Elisabeth herself as the primary engineer of her public image and argues for the widespread influence of her construction on both modern art and the emerging phenomenon of celebrity."--Back cover.

Contents

List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Chapter One: Staging the State Portrait -- Chapter Two: Styling Authenticity: The Boundless Hair of the Celebrity Monarch -- Chapter Three: The Imaginary Empress: Photomontage and the Simulation of Intimacy -- Chapter Four: Elisabeth and the Modernist Imagination of Anton Romako -- Chapter Five: Sissi in New York: T. J. Wilcox and Elisabeth's Descendants in the United States -- Endnotes -- Bibliography -- Index