Count Hartig with his wife Eleonora as Roman Charity in a painting by Barbara Krafft

An unequal match, you say? The President of the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences, friend of Emperor Joseph II, seasoned diplomat, civil servant, and man of letters and poet of acknowledged standing in Europe, Franz de Paula Anton Count von Hartig (1758-1797), is suckled at the breast of his young wife Eleonora. Young, well, she is a mere 6 years his junior, though beside a white-haired patriarch she looks a veritable girl: such is what devoted public service can make of a man. Franz Hartig, however, did not lose his sense of humour, and remained a great original.

The subject of the painting unquestionably alludes to the well-known theme of Roman Charity, otherwise called the Roman Daughter's love for her father. Yet as chosen by the Austrian artist Barbara Krafft, incidentally the creator of perhaps the most famous portrait of Mozart (a posthumous one), the allegory points us straight to the biblical myth of Lot and his daughters; perhaps it was for this reason that the portraitist deliberately made the aristocrat's wife younger.