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Lot Essay
These vases are part of a garniture of vases ruputedly commissioned by Empress Maria-Theresa of Austria, each depicting one of her children. Stylistically, the vases are unlikely to pre-date 1780, and unlikely to have been made after 1795, so it is perhaps more likely that the vases depict her grandchildren. Information about how they came to pass from the Royal family into other hands is currently unknown, although they were probably given as gifts to high-ranking courtiers, before the Viennese auction house Wawra sold them in 1908. The vase on the right probably depicts Francis (1768-1835) who became Holy Roman Emperor Francis II in 1792 and Francis I, Emperor of Austria in 1804 (after the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved) and his sister, Maria-Theresa (1767-1827) who later married Anthony I, King of Saxony. There was no issue from Francis's first marriage (he married four times), although it is possible that the other vase depicts his cousin and second wife, Maria-Therese of Naples (1772-1807) whom he married in 1790, and their daughter, Maria Louise, who was born in 1791 and later married Napoleon in 1810. For a blue-ground white biscuit portrait medallion made in the manner of Wedgwood, see Wilhelm Mrazek and Waltraud Neuwirth, op. cit. (Vienna, 1970), pl. 77, fig. 564, which is dated to circa 1780-90.