This is a copy by Minnigerode of the portrait of the Empress by Winterhalter dated 1864 which is now in the Hofburg in Vienna. Queen Victoria requested a copy of a portrait of the Empress by Winterhalter ‘as a record of the lovely Empresses visit. None of her Photographs do her justice or give a real idea of her’. The Empress Elizabeth was the daughter of Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria. She married the Emperor Francis Joseph in 1854. That year Queen Victoria wrote to the King of the Belgians that ‘Every body says the young Empress Elizth is charming & the Empr violently in love’. In 1862 Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter met the Empress in Vienna and wrote: ‘her beauty though not regular is surpassing – I never saw anything so dazzling or piquant. Her features are not so good as they are represented on most of her pictures – but the ensemble is far more lovely than any reproduction can convey an idea of … most extraordinary quantity of chestnut hair I ever saw, perfect loads of it’. Signed and dated: Ludw. Minnigerode / nach / Fr Winterhalter. / 1874.