Maria Anna, Erzherzogin von Österreich (1738-1789), in rosa Kleid, mit schwarzem, perlenbesetzten Halsband

Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria, born in 1738, was the third daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and Francis I. Liotard's miniature on ivory, now in the Albertina, was made in 1762, when Maria Anna was twenty-three. She was a remarkable woman who never married, instead becoming a lay canoness and pursuing artistic and intellectual interests, eventually administering a convent in Klagenfurt. Liotard had an extended connection with the Habsburg court — he first visited Vienna in 1743 and returned repeatedly through the 1760s, making portraits of Maria Theresa, Francis I, and their children. Miniatures on ivory were prestige objects in court culture, combining technical virtuosity with intimate scale, and the Albertina's holding of this work places it in one of the great imperial collections of central Europe.

Painted on ivory, the translucent support contributing warmth and luminosity to the flesh tones that no paper or parchment ground could match. The small scale requires extreme economy of means: individual strokes of colour must do the work that broad passages achieve in larger formats. The pink dress and black pearl-set necklace create a deliberate colour contrast.