Description

Publication by DPDF 2007 “Visual Culture” Fellow Olivia Gruber Florek

This article examines Franz Xaver Winterhalter’s 1864 portrait of Empress Elisabeth (Kaiserin Elisabeth mit verschlungenem Haar). Using visual analysis and a psychoanalytic framework, the article argues that the eroticism portrayed in this portrait is unique within Winterhalter’s oeuvre and foreshadows the sexuality theorized by Sigmund Freud and represented in images of femmes fatales at the fin de siècle.