Page - 82 - in Die Repräsentation der Habsburg-Lothringischen Dynastie in Musik, visuellen Medien und Architektur - 1618–1918

82 Sektion I: Themen und Medien der Repräsentation constraint.”5 What may appear as idle gossip amongst aristocratic elites had political consequences for the struggling Habsburg government. Elisabeth’s nearly two-year- long absence from the court precluded her participation in the public appearances central to her husband’s relationship with his multinational subjects.6 Her departure also coincided with several of her child-bearing years, thereby compromising Elisa- beth’s ability to produce numerous heirs for the Habsburg throne, her primary impe- rial responsibility. Elisabeth’s intransigence extended to a more subtle form of disobedience: an ap- parent refusal to pose for photographs with her Habsburg family. Though she posed dozens of times with her Bavarian siblings or favorite dogs, Elisabeth appeared in only a single group portrait with the Habsburgs (Fig. 3). There exists no written evi- dence of the empress’s refusal to be photographed with her family, but the ubiquity of carte de visite portrait groupings among their aristocratic peers, including several of Franz Joseph’s younger brothers posing with his wife and children7, as well as the importance of family portraits in the history of Habsburg representation8, suggests that Elisabeth deliberately avoided this practice. To obfuscate Elisabeth’s uncooperative attitude, portrait artists manipulated pho- tographic technologies to visually return Elisabeth to her husband’s side. In an 1861 portrait (Fig. 4), Franz Joseph appears confident, his left hand resting jauntily on his hip, while his right hand appears to touch the seated Elisabeth’s upper back; she gazes affectionately toward the two children. It contains all the hallmarks of carte de visite Figure 3: Ludwig Angerer, The Imperial Family, 1860, carte de visite.