Newsletter: Winter 2004

Martin van Meytens was born in Stockholm in 1695, the son of a portraitist of the same name who moved north from The Hague in 1677 to work for the Swedish court of Charles XI. Extraordinary military success in the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) had made Sweden a powerful and wealthy country and many foreign artists were drawn to the opportunities there. Martin van Meytens the Younger trained first with his father in Sweden before going abroad to work and study the old masters. He began his inter national career in 1714 as a miniature painter in London. He soon moved on to France, where his skill and his contacts in England allowed him access to the highest levels of Parisian society, notably the circle of Philippe, due d'Orleans, who led the regency of Louis XV In 1732 he was appointed painter to the Viennese court, where he quickly established himself as the leading painter in Vienna. In 1740 Maria Theresa became the Holy Roman Empress, and Van Meytens painted her repeatedly. The Princeton picture, which almost certainly had a pendant portrait of Maria Theresa's husband, Franz I, is one of the artist's fifteen known representations of the Empress. Many are full-scale state portraits like this one, with the state regalia-the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary and the coronation scepter of Hungary-shown prominently on a side table.