Virtuosity Domesticated: Portraits of Franz Liszt by Two Biedermeier Artists

Abstract

The wide variety of nineteenth-century images of the great pianist-composer Franz Liszt (1811-1886) provides both art historians and musicologists with a rich resource through its sheer diversity and comprehensiveness. Of great potential value are the insights that Lisztian iconography may provide into the changing nature of Romanticism and music during much of the nineteenth century. In this paper I will focus upon only a minute portion of Liszt's vast iconography by discussing some selected portraits from the years around 1840 by two prominent Biedermeier artists. In discussing these portraits several underlying questions or themes will emerge, perhaps the most important of which is how Liszt's larger-than-life persona was reconciled into the apparently incompatible context of Biedermeier imagery. This issue may in turn shed more light on the context for Liszt's unparalleled success in Vienna as a touring virtuoso in the late 1830s and 1840s.