Portrait of the Wife of Ferenc Rákóczi II, Charlotte Amalie, Princess of Hessen-Rheinfels

Ádám Mányoki chose an oval picture field to present the lady clad in sumptuous fabrics, who turns her head slightly to the left as she looks at the viewer. The model was identified via David Richter’s portrait from 1704; she was the daughter of Charles, Landgrave of Hesse-Wanfried, and the wife of Ferenc Rákóczi II. During the war of independence, Charlotte Amalie, whom Rákóczi married in 1694, repeatedly tried to obtain political and diplomatic help for her husband. The year of making can be determined with a fair amount of certainty: in 1707, Mányoki made a portrait of Rákóczi in Berlin, and the piece presented here was probably its pendant. Mányoki could not possibly meet the princess at a later time, so he had to paint her portrait in the same year. The two likenesses were to meet briefly again almost 300 years later, in 2006, at the exhibition Museum – Circle, where the prince’s portrait, held by the Historical Gallery of the Hungarian National Museum, was hung next to the wife’s likeness.