Emperor Franz I, Empress Maria Theresa and Their Son Archduke Joseph

This 1765 group portrait of Emperor Franz I, Empress Maria Theresa, and their son Archduke Joseph—the future Emperor Joseph II—is one of Liotard's most ambitious multi-figure works. Franz I died in 1765, the same year as this painting, meaning either the work was completed just before his death or the date marks the commission rather than completion. Maria Theresa was devastated by Franz's sudden death from stroke during the festivities surrounding Joseph's wedding; the portrait therefore becomes inadvertently a valedictory image of the Habsburg imperial family before its reorganisation under the widowed empress and her reforming son. The Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen holds this work as part of its European old master collection. The presence of the future Joseph II, dressed in the costume of his office, foreshadows the radical Josephine reforms that would shake the Habsburg Empire in the following decades.

Three figures of distinct ages—a middle-aged emperor, an empress in her late forties, and a young man of twenty-four—require Liotard to differentiate age and authority across the composition. Oil on canvas allows the larger format necessary for a triple portrait while maintaining his precise handling.