Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Europe

by Simon Winder

The castle is crowded with elaborate objects and paintings which seem only to mock Maximilian’s fate – many of them only installed after he left for good. There is a very strange painting of him as a teenager with his younger brother Karl Ludwig (the future father of Franz Ferdinand) inspecting the bottoms and breasts of slave-girls in a Smyrna market. I have never been able to work out how to even start researching who thought that was a good idea as a theme for a painting – perhaps it started off as a private memento. Maximilian’s time in the navy is commemorated by his having his private office as an exact copy of his office on board his flagship, with lots of nautical-looking struts – a hearty joke which must have rather paled by the time that work was completed. There is a painting of the seemingly unenthusiastic ceremonies in Venice (a small bonfire and a handful of boats – it’s no Canaletto) when he was appointed Viceroy of Lombardy–Venetia. And here too is the actual table at which he signed his assent to become Emperor of Mexico. There is also a spooky range of posh gifts which he never saw, from top well-wishers such as the Pope, plus an unused Japanese-themed smoking-room and a chapel still futilely decorated with a Mexican eagle. Best of all is an oil painting by Cesare dell’Acqua (perhaps the worst painter of the nineteenth century, albeit in a hotly contested field) showing the Argonauts in olden times rowing into the bay of Miramare and being waved at by lot...