Marriage of Emperor Franz Joseph & Empress Elisabeth ‘Sisi’

Marriage of Emperor Franz Joseph & Empress Elisabeth ‘Sisi’
“Of course I love him, how could I help but love him?
If only he were not an emperor.”
~ Sisi.

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The wedding of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria and Elisabeth (Sisi) took place in Vienna on 24th April 1854.
Nothing could have prepared Sisi for the intense, strict, and isolating life that stood before her.
As thousands crowded the streets on her wedding day, she was seen crying inside her glass coach, overwhelmed by her future…..

Empress Sisi was a dedicated follower of fashion, so it was inevitable that her Wedding Gown, would be something spectacular.
Unfortunately there was no trace, or even a good picture or painting to be found, of Sisi’s wedding gown.

Empress Sisi’s wedding dress was veiled in secrecy for almost 200 years.
This was because journalists, illustrators, or anyone who could chronicle the event, were banned from the Imperial wedding.
The best image to go on, was the contemporary picture that shows Sisi, and possibly her mother Ludovika.

Following a tradition of those days, Sisi’s wedding gown was donated to the church after the wedding.
There, they cut out the silver embroidery with intricate flower garlands and used it to decorate a priests mantle!
Just one trace of the gown remained ~ a lavish train.

Thanks to Sisi’’s daughter, Archduchess Marie Valérie, a part of the wedding dress was preserved.
She kept the gold embroided silk wedding train, as a special reminder.
In 1989, it was found in the possession of the descendants of Archduchess Marie Valérie, and acquired by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

Then, in 2021, a breakthrough arrived…..
Dr. Kurzel-Runtscheiner, the director of the museum, received a tantalizing message.
She was contacted Spanish freelance researcher Silvia Santibañez, who told her she’d found an obscure 1857 portrait of Sisi at the Silesian Museum in Opava, Czech Republic.
In this painting, Sisi is wearing a wedding dress, including the train from the museum in Vienna!

The 1857 portrait was unusual for two key reasons.
Firstly, it was painted three years after the wedding.
Secondly, it was not done by an Imperial court artist, as was tradition, but by a painter named Joseph Neugebauer.

Dr. Kurzel-Runtscheiner says~
“Joseph Neugebauer shows the dress in such detail that he must
have seen it.
There is no other painting, description, or representation of the
dress he could have used”

A reproduction of Sisi’s gown was then carefully recreated.
The recreated dress, along with the original 1857 portrait of Sisi wearing the dress, are on display at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. in Vienna.