That very wedding banquet of Joseph and Isabella, open to the widest public, was held in the Hofburg, the winter palace of the Austrian Habsburgs

That very wedding banquet of Joseph and Isabella, open to the widest public, was held in the Hofburg, the winter palace of the Austrian Habsburgs. At the centre of a table that looks modest beside the expanse of the colossal hall sat the imperial couple, Francis I Stephen and Maria Theresa, with the bridegroom and the bride on either side of them. Perhaps some will be curious about the young couple's far from happy married life that followed and, for instance, the vivid romance of Isabella of Parma with her husband's sister Maria Christina, captured in hundreds of friendly-amorous letters dispatched within the confines of a single palace. But my own attention was caught rather by the tableware at the wedding feast: the imperial family ate from pure gold, this service having been a wedding gift to the bride. Van Meytens depicted the moment when the desserts were served, carried round by aristocratic stewards in black Spanish dress coats. Small saucers of sweetmeats stood on a broad silver stand amid magnificent sculptures of sugar, which from a distance resembled some unprecedentedly artful porcelain