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The Celebrity Monarch
Empress Elisabeth and the Modern Female Portrait
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Olivia Gruber Florek
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2023
About this book
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 trilogy Sissi (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 Monarch reveals 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.
Author / Editor information
OLIVIA GRUBER FLOREK is an Associate Professor of Art History at Delaware County Community College in Media, PA. Her work has appeared in Sissi's World: The Empress Elisabeth in Memory and Myth (2018), edited by Maura Hametz and Heidi Schlippacke, and Representing the Habsburg-Lorraine Dynasty in Music, Visual Media, and Architecture, ca. 1618-1918 (2017), edited by Werner Telesko.
Reviews
"A pleasure to read. It is chockful of interesting information about nineteenth-century politics, art, and photography. Readers will benefit from her many insightful readings of a wide variety of visual material. . . . Gruber Florek's book substantially enhances our understanding of Franz Josef's Austria and fin-de-siècle culture and art. I highly recommend it."
— Elisabeth Maria Krimmer, Austrian History YearbookTopics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Table of contents
v -
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List of illustrations
vii -
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Acknowledgements
xv -
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INTRODUCTION
1 -
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CHAPTER 1 STAGING THE STATE PORTRAIT
23 -
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CHAPTER 2 STYLING AUTHENTICITY the boundless hair of the celebrity monarch
71 -
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CHAPTER 3 THE IMAGINARY EMPRESS photomontage and the simulation of intimacy
109 -
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CHAPTER 4 ELISABETH AND THE MODERNIST IMAGINATION OF ANTON ROMAKO
137 -
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CHAPTER 5 SISSI in NEW YORK T. J. Wilcox and Elisabeth’s descendants in the united states
163 -
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Endnotes
189 -
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Bibliography
213 -
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Index
227
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
December 8, 2022
eBook ISBN:
9781644532898
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9781644532898
Keywords for this book
Empress Elisabeth of Austria; Empress Elisabeth; Habsburg Emperor Francis Joseph I; Emperor Francis Joseph I; Gustav Klimt; T. J. Wilcox; Sissi; women's studies; cultural studies; celebrity studies; German studies; Austrian royalty; theatre and performance studies; kings and queens; royalty; monarchy; art history; portraiture; royal portraits; Austrian art; public portraiture; public personality; public perception; popular culture; celebrity; biography; nineteenth-century art; contemporary art; Habsburg; Vienna 1900; carte-de-viste photography
Audience(s) for this book
For universities and colleges of further and higher education
