Empress Elisabeth, Part V.

[Oberon]

[Yelena Aleksandrovna]

I can't see the images of replies number 132 and 129, were they similar than the last one? Anyways, is interesting to see the aged verssion of Sissi's coronation portrait. Is a great pity that in the very few photos of the Empress in old age, she is always covering her face with fans, anyways, I don't think that the aged verssion portrait is much "accurate", or at least it doesn't look very much like the face of the Empress in the only photo of her in old age where her face can be seen (1898). Sadly, the photo is very small and we can't see her skin very well.

Although in my opinion it doesn't look like they took into account just how much she abused herself physically, which I'm sure would have effected her face quite a bit. I believe her face became very weather beaten due to all of her outdoor activity and her anorexia and extreme dieting didn't help matters either.

Agree with this!! Both things, anorexia and too much exercise outdoors surely didn't help her skin to age much well.

[Jen_94]

Wow, a ton to catch up on on this thread...will have a read through it soon

Have to agree Maria Sisi, and it is a shame that photo is not a good/clear one Yelena.

[Maria Sisi]

I can't remember all of it but I remember reading a letter Franz Joseph wrote to Katharina Schratt warning her of Elisabeth's appearance before one of their meetings.

He said that the Empress had a very bad rash and not to look shocked or anything as it was very un-pretty looking and she was very sensitive about it.

I can't remember where he said the rash appeared but her skin had a lot more issues then just wrinkling.

[Yelena Aleksandrovna]

I can't remember where he said the rash appeared but her skin had a lot more issues then just wrinkling.

Now I can see why her increasing obsession of keeping her face covered with veils and fans.

***********************************************************************************************************************

By C.Gutsch, 1857, Empress Sissi

Source and credits: restauratorok.hu, Click on the link for seeing the full size of the painting and some close ups. The image has great quality.

[Aliss_Kande]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO4-TV6Zckc

Don't know if anyone has seen this or not.  Short film/ad/music video featuring an Empress Sisi lookalike.  You might find it blasphemous or you might find it really cool.  One thing's for sure: someone on the production of this video is just as much of a royal nerd as the rest of us!

[Yelena Aleksandrovna]

Empress Elisabeth, 1865



Source: Peter's gallery at Flickr

[Maria Sisi]

Eurohistory posted on its blog an article from Jezebel (pop culture site in America) about Sissi! It was inspired by Karl Langerfeld's Sissi/Franz Joseph inspired short film that was shown before one of Chanel's fashion shows in Salzburg.

http://jezebel.com/the-most-miserable-princess-ever-sisi-empress-elisab-1671950113

The Hapsburg's are mostly forgotten in the West (outside of Marie Antoinette, and even then people forget she was a Hapsburg), so it's amazing how from time to time you can find Elisabeth in American articles and other places pretty much out of nowhere.

There really needs to be more in English on her! It's been almost 25 years since Hamann's biography and even more since Haslips.

[Yelena Aleksandrovna]

Empress Sissi in Hungarian court dress. I love to see in how many different ways were "recycled" the  few photos taken to the Empress!!! ; )



Saved from forum: index.hu

[Yelena Aleksandrovna]

Sissi by Jana Zachariáše Quasta >>Click on the image for full size!



*****Source: http://alzbeta-sisi.blog.cz*****

[britt.25]

Interesting portraits. Thanks a lot to all here. I wasn't here a long time because too busy with work !! It's evident that she looks very different on every portrait. Well, the last one is interesting, too, but I think that it does not look very much like her in my opinion. What do the others think?  I didn't know the artist as well, I must confess....Is he well-known?

[Yelena Aleksandrovna]

Interesting portraits. Thanks a lot to all here. I wasn't here a long time because too busy with work !! It's evident that she looks very different on every portrait. Well, the last one is interesting, too, but I think that it does not look very much like her in my opinion. What do the others think?  I didn't know the artist as well, I must confess....Is he well-known?

By the way, I must make a correction about the artist name!!  The correct name of the artist of the last portrait is Jan Zachariáš Quast!! (thankfully, an expert on Czech language corrected me) I've googled his name and I've seen some of his works, many are good. In the case of the portrait of Empress Sissi I don't think there is much likeness, I must confess that when I saw it I thought that this was a portrait of Sissi's sister, Countess Mathilde of Trani!!!

The year is 1860.

[Yelena Aleksandrovna]

****Taken from ariananadia's livejournal****

[timfromengland]

Lady Di and
Elizabeth of Austria








There are so many similarities and parallels in the lives of Lady Diana and Empress Elizabeth of Austria.
Elizabeth, like Diana married her prince while she still a
young teenager, a decision she was to regret for the rest of her life.
She married into the Austrian Habsburg dynasty and joined a court, hide bound by rules and suffocating in formality
which Elizabeth, ( like Diana ) was eventually to reject and begin to build her own independent life.

Like Diana she was expected to breed and supply
male heirs for the dynasty.
Elizabeth eventually had one son .....Rudolf in 1858 the heir to the Hapsburg Dynasty who tragically committed suicide in 1889 at Mayerling.
She also gave birth to 3 daughters.


Elizabeth, like Di, became obsessed with fitness and keeping her trim figure. In the case of the Elizabeth she went even further in the pursuit of a svelt figure and wore elaborate corsets that reduced her waist down to 16 inches.

All this amazed the Austrian public but infuriated Elizabeth's overbearing mother in law.... the Archduchess Sophie who wanted to see her son's wife pregnant with the future dynasty not laced up for the sake of vanity.


Elizabeth , like Di, seemed to be endlessly travelling Europe... England, Madeira, Corfu, Hungary. It was as if by all this travel she could escape her problems and anxieties.

Unlike Di however , Elizabeth was a brilliant rider and horsewoman with a deep love of horses and hunting.
Elizabeth was tall for her era... 5ft 8 inches , tall and slim, just like Lady Di.




Like Lady Di, Elizabeth was famous and celebrated all over Europe, she was a stunning beauty with an amazing head of rich chestnut hair..... hair that reached down to her knees.
That rich, luxuriant hair also became a fetish, requiring hours and hours of care and preparation.

Tragically, Elizabeth, like Lady Di, died suddenly and violently
... in her case stabbed by an assassins knife in broad daylight on the shores of Lake Geneva ...she was age 60.



I feel that , if they had met, they would have recognized so many similarities in their lives and situations.
I'm sure they would have swapped anecdotes about the stuffiness and overformality of each of their respective Royal Dynasties.
They might even have become soul mates !
..... at least they would have had a lot to talk about !l



Elisabeth was born in 1837 of the eccentric Bavarian Wittelsbach royal line, and married the young Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria-Hungary when she was sixteen.

After the relative freedom of her Bavarian childhood, she found herself thrust into Europe's most ossified court.
Her sense of personal dignity and independence as well as her very real democratic and humanitarian instincts continuously offended against the role into which she was cast.

Her first ''political'' duty was to breed. She had three children in quick succession, after which, despite her excellent health and natural fertility, she refused to have any more (although she was later to have a fourth child), and encouraged her husband to take a mistress and develop a ménage à trois rather than suffer his sexual attentions.


This sexual rejection was all the more publicly scandalous and personally painful in that the Emperor was known to be (or have been) infatuated with his wife. The result was that the Empire, after the suicide of their only son, the Crown Prince Rudolph, (Mayerling ) was left without a male heir.


In the oppressively rigid Habsburg court, and under the constant interference of her mother-in-law, the Archduchess Sophie, which prevented her from breast-feeding her children and developing a natural relationship with them, she became reputed sexually frigid (she had been virtually raped on her wedding-night), and unmaternal, as she herself confessed, ''loath(ing) the whole business of child-bearing'' .

Elizabeth and Emperor Francis Joseph

[timfromengland]

Her sexuality was sublimated in her attachment to her younger daughter Valerie, large animals (especially horses), and the cultivation of her own body. She was famous for her equestrianship - haute école, circus-style stunt riding, and hunting.



At 44 years ''she looked like an angel and rode like the devil'' . When she finally gave up riding in 1882, she devoted herself to marathon solitary hikes, swimming, gymnastics and fencing.

The Empress' fear of pregnancy, her mania for sport and violent exercise, her preoccupation with her physique, her peculiar diet, her attitude to dress - all had one common denominator: the preservation of a figure which was naturally very slender, small-boned and muscular.

She was tall ( five feet eight inches), and never weighed over 50 kilos (111 pounds) all her adult life. Her legendary beauty and charm brought her oppressive adulation wherever she went in Europe.

She preserved her youthful appearance in the face of what press and medical opinion viewed as bizarre, not to say improper, excesses in sport, diet and slimming. She hated to have to sit down to eat. She abominated banquets.

For long periods she lived on a daily diet of raw steak and a glass of milk or orange-juice. She struck people as hyperactive, and astonishingly hardy. Her illnesses were all evidently psychosomatic, and her neurotic crises always cleared up when she was away from court, and was free to travel and ride, free of the gaze of courtiers and public, which she experienced as physically painful - as a visual rape.

Her diary, alas, was destroyed by the police after her death. But further study of archival material, of medical and newspaper reports, might reveal much more of the precise circumstances surrounding her youthful reputation for tight-lacing.

It seems that around 1860-61 her waist measured no more than the 16 inches of the belt exhibited in London at the Great Exhibition . Why was an object with such scandalous associations put on public display? With her horror of publicity, especially as regards details of her personal life, it seems inexplicable that the Empress would have encouraged gossip around so intimate a matter as a waist-measurement.




If the numerous biographies remain silent on this curious episode, is it because domestically the matter was hushed up? After all, in order to protect the imperial dignity the police actively suppressed stories of her equine acrobatics, and destroyed photographs pertaining to it.

If the 16 inch belt was displayed with her permission and knowledge (and it seems hard to conceive otherwise) or, worse, on her personal initiative, was it intended as a provocation? Was it the bizarre symbol of or satire upon the exhibitionism to which the most adulated woman in Europe was subject?

Her ''peak tight-lacing period'' seems to coincide with the prolonged and recurrent fits of paranoid depression which she suffered 1859-60, which have been attributed to her husband's political defeats, her three pregnancies, her sexual withdrawal, and quarrels with her mother-in-law over the rearing of her children.