Portrait of Eleonora Gonzaga, Empress of Austria

Eleonora Gonzaga was a princess of Mantua with a Medici mother, and in February 1622 she married Ferdinand II, king of Bohemia and Hungary and soon Holy Roman Emperor. She was 23 and he was a widower of 43. This portrait was painted about a year into that marriage.

She took Italian musicians and Italian theatre north with her, and under her the imperial court in Vienna became one of the centres of Baroque music in Europe.

Mantua itself did not last. Her three brothers ruled the duchy in turn and each died without an heir, the succession was disputed, and the emperor's troops sacked the city in 1630. By then the Gonzaga picture collection had already been sold to the king of England.

The canvas is a small one, 65 centimetres tall. She was crowned empress four years after it was painted, at Regensburg in 1627.