Portrait of Maria Theresa – copy, around 1740
Martin Meytens Jr. | oil on canvas, 166 × 256 cm
Martin van Meytens Jr. (1695–1770) is one of the leading representatives of Baroque portrait painting. He worked mainly for the imperial court, where his models and clients included not only the imperial family, the aristocracy, the intellectual and artistic elite, but also representatives of the Church. In the original work, the figure of Maria Theresa points with her left hand to the Archduke’s crown and to the crowns of St. Stephen and St. Wenceslas, which allows us to date the subject of this canvas to the period after 1743.
This is a typical Meytens conception of subject and composition, but not masterfully perfect.