Successful Hawking of Herons

In Querfurt's Vienna, hawking was something the court did. At Laxenburg, the Habsburg hunting palace south of the city, the emperors kept herons for the sport, and the falcon hunts there grew more ceremonial. In the late 1750s the painter Johann Christian Brand followed one such day at Laxenburg across four views, which also belong to the Belvedere.

Querfurt's panel names no place and shows the hunt already won. A heron lies on the ground beside a red cloak and a dropped hat, a falconer lifts a falcon on his fist towards a woman on horseback, and a boy leads a dark horse into the group. By falconry custom, a heron that survived the chase was often set free again, minus its finest feathers, with a metal ring on its leg engraved with the year and the place of capture.