The Meeting of Frederick II and Joseph II in Neisse in 1769

Painted in 1857 and held in the Alte Nationalgalerie, 'The Meeting of Frederick II and Joseph II in Neisse in 1769' is the finished version of the subject for which the 1856 sketch also survives, allowing comparison between Menzel's preparatory and completed approaches. The meeting between the Prussian and Habsburg monarchs in Silesia was a significant diplomatic event of the 1760s, marking a period of cautious coexistence between Prussia and Austria after the devastating Seven Years' War. For Menzel, the subject combined the historical reconstruction at which he excelled with a compositional challenge of the highest order — staging a diplomatic encounter between equals without either figure claiming unwanted dominance. The diplomatic meeting at Neiße was one of three encounters between Frederick and Joseph II in the late 1760s, collectively representing the post-Seven Years' War renegotiation of Central European power.

In this finished version, Menzel elaborates the spatial and figure relationships sketched in the 1856 preliminary work, achieving the level of historical costume detail and atmospheric lighting that his finished canvases demanded.