Habsburg Strategies of Representation
At the Institute for History of Art and Musicology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the cooperation project “Collectors, Collections and Collecting Cultures in Vienna and Central Europe” is integrated into the research area “Habsburgische Repräsentation in Bildender Kunst, Architektur und Musik”. This research area interrogates the ways in which the Habsburgs employ strategies, in the fine arts, architecture and music, to communicate their status and prestige, both in the Habsburg hereditary lands as well as in the Bohemian estates and Hungary. Some of the stakeholders, art works and collections investigated as part of the systematic reappraisal of these Habsburg strategies can be incorporated, albeit with different emphases and from a different perspective, directly into the project “Collectors, Collections and Collecting in Vienna and Central Europe”. In the course of individual projects conducted under the “Habsburgische Repräsentation” umbrella, such as the project “Herrscherrepräsentation und Geschichtskultur unter Maria Theresia (1740–1780)”, financed by the FWF Austrian Science Fund, extensive information is gathered on individual paintings. This information is processed and quantitatively evaluated in a database used jointly with the Department of Art History at the University of Vienna.
