Portrait of Anne of Hungary and Bohemia

In 1515, in St Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, a 12-year-old princess was married to the 56-year-old Emperor Maximilian, on the understanding that one of his grandsons would soon take his place. This is that girl, Anne, daughter of the king of Hungary and Bohemia, around 1519. By then she was 16 and living at the Habsburg court in Innsbruck. Maximilian had died that January, and the groom finally chosen, Archduke Ferdinand, was still far off in the Netherlands. They would marry in Linz in 1521.

Hans Maler sets her against a pale blue ground, in a hat pinned with brooches and a feather. The same year, the Nuremberg artist Erhard Schön made a print after this panel, and the inscription on that print is how the painting is dated. Infrared photographs show that Maler first drew a rose between her fingers, a flower he never went on to paint.