The Celebrity Monarch: Empress Elisabeth and the Modern Female Portrait [Paperback]

Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1837-1898), 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 trilogySissi(1955-57) cemented this legacy. Despite the enduring fascination with the empress, art historians have never considered Elisabeth’s role in producing her public portraiture or the influence of her creation. The Celebrity Monarchreveals how portraits of Elisabeth transformed monarchs from divinely appointed sovereigns to public personalities whose daily lives were consumed by spectators. 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, this book 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.
 The Celebrity Monarchargues that portraits of Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1837-1898) shaped both modern female portraiture and celebrity. Close study of portraits of Elisabeth, renowned as the most beautiful woman in Europe, along with her private collection of celebrity photography reveals her agency in shaping her own representation and the significance of her construction for modern Viennese artists and the emerging phenomenon of celebrity.
 OLIVIA GRUBER FLOREKis an Associate Professor of Art History at Delaware County Community College in Media, PA. Her work has appeared inSissi's World: The Empress Elisabeth in Memory and Myth(2018), edited by Maura Hametz and Heidi Schlippacke, andRepresenting the Habsburg-Lorraine Dynasty in Music, Visual Media, and Architecture, ca. 1618-1918(2017), edited by Werner Telesko.Ll3N