Miniature portrait

The portrait shows a middle-aged man with red hair and whiskers. The collar and cuffs of his black uniform are blue, embroidered with white. He puts his right hand in his coat. The other side of the medallion shows applied carvings of mother-of-pearl and ivory, placed over a stamped copper foil and under the blue glass. The carved motifs are: a young lady holding an urn, curtsying before an altar with the inscription DON DE L'AMITIE, lit by the sacrificial fire. Two doves hold a drooping garland of flowers above the scene. One of the main problems about identifying, the maker is that Franz and Thomas Spitzer cannot yet be easily separated, since earlier literature listed all miniatures with the name Spitzer among the works of Frank Spitzer. The 1827 self-portrait of Thomas Spitzer, now in the Albertina has much in common stylistically with the piece described above. The different characteristics of the signature might be explained by the ten years that passed between the painting of the two pictures. The precise attribution of the miniature is a subject for further research.