Philipp Ferdinand de Hamilton
1664–1750 · Spanish Netherlands, Holy Roman Empire · Baroque
The story
In 1716 Prince Eugene of Savoy, the Habsburg field marshal, acquired land beside his palace at the Belvedere in Vienna for a menagerie modelled on Louis XIV's at Versailles. Lions, lynxes, ostriches, monkeys, spoonbills and guinea fowl lived there, and the prince had painters record them. One of the main ones was Philipp Ferdinand de Hamilton.
Hamilton was born in Brussels, the son of James Hamilton, a Scottish still-life painter who had settled there. His brothers Johann Georg and Karl Wilhelm also became painters, and Johann Georg worked in Vienna too. Philipp Ferdinand was an imperial court painter there from 1705 until his death in 1750, known for animals and hunting scenes.
His Guinea Fowl and Coati of 1722 belongs to the menagerie years. A year later he painted Four Vultures of Different Kinds, a group portrait of birds the museum identifies as a cinereous vulture, a young and an adult griffon vulture and a king vulture. It was made for the decoration of Eugene's state bedroom on the first floor of the Upper Belvedere, the same palace where it hangs today.
