Archduchess Magdalena

In 1563 the imperial court in Vienna had a new portraitist. Giuseppe Arcimboldo had come from Milan the year before, and the faces built from fruit and vegetables that later made his name were still in the future. Plain bust portraits of the emperor's family were part of the daily work, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum gives this one to him cautiously, as an attribution. The sitter is Archduchess Magdalena, a daughter of Emperor Ferdinand I, then about 31 and unmarried. In 1567 she founded a convent for noblewomen in Hall, a small town on the river Inn just east of Innsbruck, and she lived there with two of her sisters until her death in 1590. The convent's church still stands in Hall, a short drive from Ambras Castle, where the portrait hangs.