Rosa Hagenauer-Barducci, attributed to

(Florence 1744 – 1786 Vienna)
JOHANN BAPTIST HAGENAUER AND HIS WIFE, ROSA HAGENAUER-BARDUCCI
 
Oil on canvas
Height: 34.5 cm, width: 28.5 cm
      
PROVENANCE
Collection Karl (1913–1979) and Gertrude (1921–2009) Pfatschbacher, Linz
      
This double portrait very likely shows the well-known Baroque sculptor Johann Baptist Hagenauer from Salzburg and his wife, Rosa Hagenauer-Barducci. Born in Florence in 1744, Rosa Hagenauer-Barducci was one of the first women painters in Salzburg to appear as independent artist and gain widespread recognition. The famous portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s mother is a work by her hand.
 
The painting shows the couple in their studio against the backdrop of a curtain and two columns. While the painter is seated in the foreground, her left arm, with the palette in hand, reaching out for the easel, the sculptor sits behind her. Both artists critically direct their gaze at the easel. Two busts can be seen lying on the floor, while a third is placed in front of a window that offers a view over a townscape and into the sky. The scene is rendered in pastel colours and painted with fluffy brushstrokes.
 
Johann Baptist Hagenauer was born in Ainring near Freilassing, then part of the prince-bishopric of Salzburg, in 1732. The support he received from Archbishop Count Sigismund of Schrattenbach and his uncle, Lorenz Hagenauer, enabled him to take up his studies of sculpture at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in 1754. On his subsequent journey to Italy, which began in 1759, he met twenty-year-old Rosa Barducci in Florence. The couple married in Salzburg Cathedral in 1764. Rosa, who was a painter, came from a family of artists. She repeatedly posed for her husband as a model for his sculptures, the most famous one of which is the statue of the Virgin Mary in Salzburg Cathedral Square. Her figure and face are also recognisable in many a statue in the palace gardens of Nymphenburg in Munich and of Schönbrunn in Vienna.
 
In 1761, Johann Baptist Hagenauer was appointed superintendent of the archiepiscopal picture gallery and soon afterwards was raised to the position of court statuary. It was certainly not only thanks to his own success as an artist but also because of his outstandingly beautiful and gifted wife that he became one of Salzburg’s leading and most highly sought-after artists. Rosa Hagenauer-Barducci soon made a name of herself in Salzburg as a portraitist. She mainly acquired fame through her portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s mother, which also appears on the wall of the music room in the well-known picture of the Mozart family by Johann Nepomuk della Croce, or through the portrait of Archbishop Count Sigismund of Schrattenbach.
 
In 1773, two years after the death of the archbishop, the Hagenauers’ patron, Rosa Barducci moved to Vienna, preceding her husband. Her regular contacts to artists and patrons prompted Leopold Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus’s father, to have second thoughts about her. He wrote to Salzburg: ‘On Thursday evening we met Madame Rosa on the bastion […] the good Madame acted as if we were total strangers, since she was escorted by a certain Rosa, an animal painter and superintendent.’ Unimpressed by such gossip, Johann Baptist Hagenauer followed her to Vienna soon afterwards. They resumed their life together, and both of them enjoyed high recognition. Even the emperor honoured them by paying them a visit.
 
Several years later, the painter fell ill. By the time Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whishing to collect his mother’s portrait, visited her in 1781, he found her in a miserable state of health. He wrote about it to his father: ‘You would almost fail to recognise her, emaciated as she is […]’ (see the complete edition of Mozart’s letters, Kassel 1962/63).
 
Rosa Hagenauer-Barducci suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis and died on 18 January 1786 at the age of forty-two. She was one of Salzburg’s first significant female painters. At a time when it was not considered decent for women to develop independently, she knew how to stand her ground as an artist. This double portrait impressively and beautifully illustrates the painter’s self-image.