There is a heartbreaking oil portrait of the Mozarts that was commissioned after Anna Maria’s death. The two grown children sit at the fortepiano; their father, Leopold, stands in shadows with his violin; and their beloved mother appears behind them in an oval-framed painting, her hair piled high and wide and wound with a blue ribbon. This portrait of the family is a powerful and ghostly presence at the Mozart Geburtshaus now, hung in the back of the dark, windowless, wood-rich room where Wolfgang was born. It is a bit discomfiting to explore the rest of the exhibit with the family
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“There is a heartbreaking oil portrait of the Mozarts that was commissioned after Anna Maria’s death. The two grown children sit at the fortepiano; their father, Leopold, stands in shadows with his violin; and their beloved mother appears behind them in an oval-framed painting, her hair piled high and wide and wound with a blue ribbon. This portrait of the family is a powerful and ghostly presence at the Mozart Geburtshaus now, hung in the back of the dark, windowless, wood-rich room where Wolfgang was born. It is a bit discomfiting to explore the rest of the exhibit with the family watching—rustling and whispering and mourning there in the corner.”
