Mother and child

In 1830 Anton Einsle was not yet 30 and had just finished at the Vienna academy. He had set up as a portrait painter in Prague, the capital of Bohemia within the Austrian Empire, and this picture was made there. The sitters are not named, yet he took care to show where they stood in society. There is the woman's headdress, a huge frame of lace and shiny lilac ribbon around her dark curls, the gold buckle set with pearls at her waist, and the sheen of her silk dress. Between them, the two hold a small devotional print of Saint Ignatius. The Belvedere suggests it may refer to the patron saint of the child, or of the father, who is not in the picture. The little one in blue wears a string of small orange beads and, like the mother, looks straight out at us.