Aeschylus structured the Prometheus legend as a tragic trilogy. As the son of a Titan and a powerful goddess, Prometheus held an intermediary status between god and humankind. According to myth, he created human beings, and was thus the archetypal visual artist. Against the will of the gods, Prometheus secretly lit his torch on the sun chariot and endowed his creatures with the spark of life.

Füger presents Prometheus as a victor over the arrogant tyranny of the gods. He holds the flame to the heavens in triumph. Only the finger at his lips indicates the secretive nature of his deed. At his feet rests a creature devoid of life’s warmth. A cold green indicates the lifeless material.

Füger’s Prometheus marks the end of the 18th century. The clear formal language of Classicism has replaced the excesses of the Baroque and the sweetness of Rococo art. Füger brings sculptural qualities to his mastery of this monumental format. The powerful figure of Prometheus is reminiscent of the colossal statues of the Monte Cavallo horse tamers in Rome.

Angelika Kauffmann painted this large-format portrait in Rome in 1783 (310 x 426 cm; Museo di Capodimonte, Naples). It shows Ferdinand IV, King of Naples (1751–1825), Queen Marie Carolina, a daughter of Empress Maria Theresa, and their six children in life-size, full-length figures against the backdrop of a park landscape.

In her list of works the painter includes a detailed description of the completed family portrait: ‘The King is represented in a standing pose, as if he had just returned from the hunt, the Queen sits surrounded by her children, next to her is a cradle, or rather a child’s wagon... The entire royal family is simply clothed and the painting depicts a rustic scene.’

The history behind this painting, the principal work of the artist’s portrait oeuvre, is exceptionally well documented. The modello in the Princely Collections summarises the results of the initial sketches and the intensive portrait sittings. The elaborately detailed painting followed the oil sketch.

The royal couple’s seventh child was stillborn during the preparation phase for the painting. The artist then painted a veil over the child already in the cradle, which had been clearly visible in the modello.

Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun painted this portrait of the 25 year-old Princess Maria Josefa Hermenegilde von Esterhazy (1768–1845), a daughter of Prince Franz Josef I of Liechtenstein, while staying in Vienna in 1793. This picture marked the artist’s departure from Rococo painting. She chose matt local colours and no longer dressed her model in the dainty fashion of “goût grec” style. The Princess appears in simple Roman garb, tunic and palla, free of ornamentation. In his pre-revolutionary paintings, Belisarius (1781) and The Oath of the Horatii (1785), Jacques-Louis David had propagated images of the clothing of Roman women. David’s influence spread to Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and other French painters of her generation.

The scene is also simple. The Princess is shown in front of a grotto with a view to the open sea. The staging of the sitter gives rise to associations with the subject of Ariadne on Naxos who awaits her beloved Theseus alone.

This painting is the companion piece of the portrait of Princess Esterhazy. It shows Princess Karoline of Liechtenstein, née Countess Manderscheidt, the wife of Prince Alois I and the sister-in-law of Maria Josefa Hermenegilde. Both women were of the same age. In her memoirs Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun writes that the princess’s delicate features inspired her to portray the sitter as the heavenly messenger Iris floating above the clouds. Both pictures were exhibited together in the Galerie Liechtenstein. However, the representation of the princess’s naked feet proved controversial. Her husband solved the problem by placing a pair of the finest sandals beneath the picture as if they had fallen from the goddess in her heavenly ascent and landed in the reality of the gallery floor.