Baby brother - Archduke Ludwig Viktor of Austria

 

Archduke Ludwig Viktor Joseph Anton of Austria (15 May 1842, Vienna – 18 January 1919, Schloss Klessheim), the youngest child of Archduke Franz Karl of Austria and his wife Princess Sophie of Bavaria; his elder siblings were Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico, and Archduke Karl Ludwig. Bearing the nicknames "Luziwuzi" and "Bubi" within the family circle, he was spoiled and indulged, and came to be known for his wit and sharp tongue. His open homosexuality was surprisingly well tolerated by his family, though kept a secret to the outside world, thanks to the strict censorship employed during his brother the emperor's rule. Like all Habsburg males, he was expected to pursue a military career but, unlike his brothers, he took no interest in politics, preferring to spent his time in social activities and art collecting. 

Since the irises of light colored eyes often seemed to disappear in early photography, they were often, as here, drawn back onto the print.

In spite of his quite obvious sexual proclivities, his mother tried to arrange a marriage for him with his first cousin Duchess Sophie Charlotte in Bavaria, youngest sister of Empress Elisabeth, but he declined. (Duchess Sophie would later endure a broken engagement with another homosexual cousin, Ludwig II of Bavaria.) In 1863, his brother Maximilian, soon to embark on his disastrous Mexican venture, tried to persuade Ludwig Viktor to marry Isabel, daughter and heir presumptive of Emperor Pedro II of Brazil, arguing that "such a marriage might found yet another Habsburg dynasty in Latin America." This union he also declined. 

With his immediate family, 1860.

Back row: Emperor Franz Joseph I, Archduke Maximilian and his wife Charlotte of Belgium, Archduke Ludwig Viktor, Archduke Karl Ludwig.
Front row: Empress Elisabeth with her children Rudolf and Gisela, Archduchess Sophie and her husband Archduke Franz Karl. 

The brothers: Archduke Karl Ludwig, Emperor Franz Joseph I, Archduke Maximilian, Archduke Ludwig Viktor.

The brothers: Archduke Ludwig Viktor, Emperor Franz Joseph I, Archduke Karl Ludwig, Archduke Maximilian.

That same year, at the age of twenty-one, Ludwig Viktor commissioned architect Heinrich von Ferstel to design and build a city palace. The Palais Erzherzog Ludwig Viktor, the first building to be erected on the new Schwarzenbergplatz, and now a subsidiary house of the Burgtheater, was completed three years later. Within its walls, the archduke began to fully indulge his great passion for art collecting and lavish entertaining. Photographs from this period exist showing him in women's clothes. I haven't been able to determine whether he was a regular "crossdresser", as he is often rather derisively described, or that he merely wanted a visual record of having dressed in that manner for a costume party or amateur theatrical. 

In the same dress and setting as the image above. The others are unidentified.

A double exposure, the archduke wearing both male and female attire.

Also in 1866, his brother the emperor ceded to him Schloss Klessheim, a Baroque palace four kilometers to the west of Salzburg; originally built as a summer palace, between 1880 and 1882 it was enlarged by the archduke's same architect, von Ferstel. He was popular in Salzburg and, as a member of the imperial family, he became one of the leaders of society, assuming the patronage of the Salzburg Society of Art, known for his philanthropy and his splendid parties. Apparently, however, officers stationed in Salzburg were soon forbidden to accept his invitations, his "inclinations" being the whispered explanation.

The fairly free hand the archduke was given regarding his personal life came to an end in 1904. (Or 1906, or some other date; the facts of Ludwig Viktor's life are hard to come by, the results often contradictory.) A frequent and familiar visitor to Vienna's Central Bathhouse - the Central-Bad Wien - where he was know to make assignations, often proffering gifts to likely young men, an incident occurred there that couldn't be entirely hushed up: he made unwanted advances to another man or a bath attendant resulting in the archduke being slapped or otherwise roughed up. The scandal leaked out, and his brother the emperor, remarkably tolerant up to this point, banished him from the capital, ordering him to retire to his Salzburg estate.

In addition to the retouching of his protuberant left ear, the medal on his chest has been crudely drawn on, probably on the negative.

He lived out his last fifteen years at Schloss Klessheim, surrounded by his vast collection of art, silver, jewelry, furniture, porcelain, etc. In 1915, due to "mental incapacity" - perhaps some form of dementia? - he was put under the care of a conservator. Only months after the end of WWI and the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire, he died at the age of seventy-six, the last of his immediate family, on the same day as the commencement of the Paris Peace Conference in Versailles. As per his wishes, he was buried in Salzburg's Siezenheim cemetery rather than the Imperial Crypt in Vienna. The Schloss Klessheim was sold the same year by the Habsburg family, and his enormous collection of art and objects took nearly a full year to auction, in 1921-22.

Portrait by Heinrich von Angeli, 1874.

Louise, Queen of the Belgians - two miniatures by Sir William Ross.

Louise d'Orléans (Louise-Marie Thérèse Charlotte Isabelle; 3 April 1812, Palermo – 11 October 1850, Ostend), French princess and first Queen of the Belgians as the second wife of King Léopold I. The eldest daughter of the future Louis-Philippe I, King of the French and his wife Marie-Amélie de Bourbon-Siciles, she married the King of the Belgians at the Château de Compiègne in 1832; she was twenty, he was twenty-two years her senior. Since Léopold was a Protestant, there were two wedding ceremonies, Catholic and Calvinist.

1840. This is actually a reduced copy by Magdalena Ross, younger sister of Sir William, made for Queen Victoria.

Léopold's first wife, Princess Charlotte of Wales, had died in 1817 from complications a day after the birth of a stillborn son; he was said to have never quite recovered from the loss. Although never faithful to his second wife, Léopold respected her and the marriage was a harmonious one. Louise was of a shy nature and was never comfortable in her public role, but she was popular with the Belgian court due to her kindness and generosity.

Engraving of Ross' three-quarter length miniature, the Queen posed in the garden at Laeken. I believe the original is now in a private collection.

Léopold was the uncle to both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert - who were, of course, first cousins - and the Belgian couple was very close to their British relations. Louise's family was as well; Queen Victoria was welcoming and most supportive when, after the revolution of 1848, the Orléans royals fled to England.

1846.

The royal couple had four children, including the infamous King Léopold II, the scourge of the Congo, and the tragic Charlotte, known to history as Empress Carlota of Mexico. Queen Louise died of tuberculosis at Ostend at the age of only thirty-eight.

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The Death of Queen Louise-Marie, by Jozef Meganck, circa 1850.

Her final letter to her husband, written not long before her death:

Dear, dear friend,

This will shall be given to you when I shall be no longer, when my heart, this heart which will never have beaten except for you, shall have ceased to beat, when my eyes, which so loved to contemplate you, will have been closed by death, and my soul alone shall be able to watch over you, when, finally, I shall have no more hope of seeing you again, except in that unknown world, the object of your concerns and your wishes, where, I hope, God will grant us the grace of being eternally reunited. May you find, in the expression of my last wishes, and be able to guess, beyond words, a meagre part of the affection and the gratitude I feel towards you, and which no human language will ever be able to express. May God take charge of the debt of my gratitude and thank you for your kindness towards me, by blessing you and protecting you in all things as my heart desires and as I ask Him without ceasing. May you be happy that I have been happy because of you and close to you. May you be loved, appreciated, cherished, admired, I was almost going to say adored, by many, as you have been by me. May your children be always for you a source of joy and consolation. May your death be sweet like that of the just man and your last moments made beautiful by the memory of all the good you have done to me and to others. May you, in eternity, enjoy that immaterial happiness, without limits, for which your soul, more than any other, was created, and may I be able to serve you, you and those you have loved, or, at least, see you from afar in that blessed eternity and have the certitude of your happiness, even without sharing it. These, dear friend, are my last and dearest wishes, for there is not a beat of my heart nor a thought of my soul which is not yours and for you. My affection for you, that affection which was, I can say, the life of my life, the motive and the essence of my existence here below, must also, I sense, be immortal, like the soul God gave me to adore Him, to serve Him, to pray Him and to appreciate His benefits and must, like it, survive this body of mud. Whatever the moment when almighty God may call me to Him, and whatever anguish, which only the thought of being separated from you may cause me to feel, I can only bless His name, adore His decrees, submit myself to them and thank Him for the happiness, so great and so little made for this earth, which He granted me by uniting me to you. And whether my life is long or short, I will always have lived long enough if I was at all good for you, even if only for an instant. 

The tomb of Léopold and Louise in the royal crypt which is situated in the church of Notre-Dame de Laeken.

The church, near the royal family's official residence outside of Brussles, the Château de Laeken, was built in memory of Queen Louise.

La Alameda de México, by José María Velasco, 1866

The artistic depiction of the most attractive public thoroughfares in Mexico City reached its height in the nineteenth century and combined panoramic views of specific sites with costumbrista portrayals of citizens relaxing. The growth of the "urban landscape" genre was not only encouraged by the teachers of landscape painting at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, but also welcomed by the commercial art sector, which was eagerly producing albums of lithographic reproductions. The paseos most favored by the city's inhabitants were the Bucareli Street, the Canal de Santa Anita (or Canal de La Viga), the Las Cadenas promenade adjacent to the city's main square and, oldest of all, the Alameda. In this painting, Velasco depicts the Alameda park which then stood on the edge of the city. In the background, the prospect opens out into fields and rolling hills, and a view of Chapultepec Castle. (An artistic slight of hand as, in reality, the convent of San Diego and other building stood in the way of that view.) Surrounding the shaded fountain and lining the earthen horse path are a loosely arranged group of figures: indigenous, mestizo, and of European descent, rich and poor. And at the center of the composition - in full sun, dressed in white, ribbons fluttering in the breeze - are the Empress Carlota and a lady-in-waiting. The Empress, who had sponsored the remodeling of the park, is escorted by a gentleman and a group of elegant chinaco horsemen. This is a poignant and highly romanticized vision of Mexico under the brief reign of the tragic Emperor Maximilian.

Though I've seen this painting also referred to as Paseo a Caballo de Carlota en la Alameda, though Chapultepec Castle looms in the background, I'm not entirely convinced that the featured horsewoman here is indeed the Empress. The official title makes no mention of her. This was painted in 1866; in August of that year, Carlota sailed back to Europe to fight for her husband's throne. (There was, of course, the famous break in her mental health soon after, and she never returned to her adopted country.) But it appears this painting was first exhibited in 1869, two years after the fall of the Empire. So if it was the Empress that the artist portrayed, by that remove it would have been a connection no one would have been too happy to publicize. So are we to believe that the "starring role" in this beautiful tableau is the soon-to-be-"mad" Carlota, or is it just another pretty lady on a horse?

A view of Chapultepec Castle - at this date, still on the outskirts of the city - and the residence of the Imperial couple, 1864-67.

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José María Tranquilino Francisco de Jesús Velasco Gómez Obregón, generally known as José María Velasco, (6 July 1840, Temascalcingo – 26 August 1912, Mexico City), nineteenth-century Mexican artist and polymath, most famous for making Mexican geography a symbol of national identity through his paintings. He was both one of the most popular artists of the time and internationally renowned. He received many distinctions such as the gold medal of the Mexican National Expositions of Bellas Artes in 1874 and 1876; the gold medal of the Philadelphia International Exposition in 1876, on the centenary of U.S. independence; and the medal of the Paris Universal Exposition in 1889. His painting El valle de México is considered Velasco's masterpiece, of which he created seven different renditions. Of all the nineteenth-century painters, Velasco was the "first to be elevated in the post-Revolutionary period as an exemplar of nationalism.

Velasco was interested in science, and, as a student at the Academia de San Carlos studied zoology and botany at the nearby medical school; he also studied mathematics, geology, and surveying before becoming a student of painting. In 1879, he described a new species of Ambystoma - a type of salamander - found in the Santa Isabel lake, north of Mexico City, and published his observations in the Mexican scientific journal La Naturaleza. He named the new species Siredon Tigrina; it was later renamed Ambystoma velasci in his honor.

Dour and dim - two unfortunate portraits of the Emperor and Empress of Mexico, attributed to Santiago Rebull

Circa 1867.

Circa 1867.

These two portraits, most likely copies after the originals of Santiago Rebull, bring no honor to the memories of the ill-starred Maximiliano and Carlota of Mexico. The Empress, the ambitious daughter of the King of the Belgians, while handsome, had a fairly severe countenance, something her image here only accentuates. And while the Emperor's portrait doesn't gloss over his protruding lower lip - the infamous "Habsburg lip" - the artist might have asked HIM to close his mouth; the former archduke of Austria was no genius - he thought he could pull off being emperor of Mexico, after all - but the gaping mouth makes him look more than a bit dull-witted.

Santiago Rebull Gordillo (1829 - 1902, Mexico City) Mexican painter. Of Catalan descent, he was born on a boat sailing under a British flag to Spain. (His family had had to leave Mexico on account of the Republican government's Law of Expulsion directed at native-born Spanish males.) Returning to Mexico as a teenager, he entered the Academia de San Carlos at the age of eighteen; he would become director there in 1860, continuing in that position for the next forty years. In 1851 he was awarded a prize to study at the Accademia di San Luca in Italy, where he would remain for seven years. During the brief Mexican Empire, he was made pintor de camara to the Emperor and Empress, and was decorated with the order of Guadalupe.

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1865 copy by Joaquín Ramírez of Rebull's state portrait, from which the version here was certainly taken.