Art telling Women's former role at Society

 

This is a famous portrait of The Empress Elisabeth of Austria, known as Sissi. It was painted in 1865 by the german artist Franz Xaver Winterhalter, who painted her a couple of times.

Winterhalter used to apply the brushwork, which was influenced by the Romantic style.

In the 1860s, women were expected to not only be exemplary mothers, but also to have great fashion sense. 

Through their fashion, women became the 'mirror' of their husbands. The more embellishments and jewelry a woman wore suggested the higher status they had, so it became the woman's role to show her husband's social position through her extravagant dresses. 

In this portrait, Sissi is wearing an evening ball gown. The double crinoline skirt was very much in fashion at that time. In her hands, she is holding a fan, which was also an indispensable fashion accessory for middle and upper class women. Sissi's head is crowned with her large braids seemingly to a diadem, and decorated with diamond pins imitating Edelweiss flowers, the Austrian Alps' flowers, which also ornate her thick and long hair.

Sissi was 28 years old at the time of that portrait was painted. She was very admired by her beauty. 

Accordingly to some Historians, she was deeply concerned with her physical appearance, and pushed herself to control her weight, to keep the slim shape forever and to retard aging. Since she felt aging she wouldn't have allowed no longer paintings of her, she used to travel and spend time incognito and possibly had the habit of wearing veils in public in order to hide time marks on her face.

The fairy-tale story of the most famous Austrian empress ever had a fateful ending, with her assassination in 1898 by an italian anarchist in Switzerland.