This painting is a copy of Winterhalter’s original portrait painted in Paris in 1864. Graefle also copied its companion painting of the Emperor’s wife, Princess Charlotte of Belgium (RCIN 402474). The Emperor Maximilian (1832-67) is wearing the badge of the Golden Fleece and the ribbon of the Order of Our Lady of Guadalupe. He was the younger son of the Archduke Franz Karl and younger brother of the Emperor Franz Josef. In 1864 he accepted the Mexican crown but after French troops withdrew from Mexico in 1867 he was overcome by the republican forces of the former President Juarez. He was executed at Queretaro on 19 June 1867. He had visited London in 1857 for the christening of Princess Beatrice, Queen Victoria’s youngest child. Queen Victoria described him in 1863: ‘He has a great wish to distinguish himself, and to get out of his present dolce far niente. Charlotte dear…is very venturesome and would go with Max to the end of the world’.