Rita Charbonnier - author of MOZART'S SISTER - Official Site

Source: Wikimedia Commons

This irresistible portrait of Mozart as a child, in formal dress with a sword at his side, is one of the most famous of the great musician (to see more clearly, click on it). It was painted around 1763 when Wolfgang was seven, probably by an artist called Pietro Antonio Lorenzoni. The painting belongs to the Mozarteum, the foundation that protects and promotes the figure of Mozart, based in Salzburg.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Of the same period is this portrait of Nannerl, his sister – again probably by Pietro Antonio Lorenzoni. The beautiful clothes that the children are wearing were given to them the year before by the Imperial Court of Vienna. The two portraits are mentioned in Mozart’s Sister, and described by Nannerl, on page 16.

Source: mozart.infonet.com.br

This ivory miniature of the two little Mozarts was made a few years later by Eusebius Johann Alphen (1741-1772). I find this one charming: enlarge it and you will see a sense of loving harmony emerge that is completely absent in the other portraits.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

This image is very famous because there are various versions, both ancient and modern. The two young musicians play and sing with their father, Leopold. The original, a water colour, was painted by Louis de Carmontelle in 1763 in Paris, where Herr Mozart had taken his children on a tournée. Looking at this picture, I have always been struck by the fact that Nannerl is already in a concealed position. She appears rigid, apart, hidden behind the harpsichord and she is looking straight ahead of her while Leopold affectionately watches over his smaller child, and only him.

Source: mozartportraits.com

On the other hand, this portrait of Nannerl is relatively unknown. It was the one used for the cover of the American and French editions of Mozart’s Sister. It was painted not more than twenty years ago, by an anonymous artist, on the basis of a portrait that Nannerl had posed for around 1785, and to which no one knows what happened. Therefore we cannot be sure that Nannerl really looked like the woman in the painting – which also goes for the enormous number of portraits of Mozart, or presumably of Mozart, that can be found on the net.

Portrait attributed to Jean-Baptiste Greuze. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

For example, look at this...

Portrait found in Denmark in 2004. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

...and this...

Portrait by Johann Georg Edinger. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

...and this: what did he really look like, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart?

Courtesy of the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna.

According to Leopold, their father, this portrait was a very good likeness. Today it is one of the few that are known to be authentic, and for which it is certain that Mozart actually posed. It hangs in the Museo Internazionale della Musica in Bologna. It belonged to Father Giovanni Battista Martini (1706-1784), a well-known music teacher whom Mozart studied with, and who had the good habit of keeping portraits of his best students. At the top it reads: CAV. AMADEO WOLFGANGO MOZART ACCAD. FILARMON. DI BOLOGNA E DI VERONA (Knight Amadeo Wolfgango Mozart Philharmonic Academic of Bologna and Verona).

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Perhaps this was what Mozart’s face really looked like. It is a detail from a beautiful painting...

Family portrait attributed to Johann Nepomuk della Croce (1736-1819). Source: Wikimedia Commons.

...that figures Mozart with his family – described in Mozart’s Sister on page 275. This painting was commissioned by Leopold Mozart between 1780 and 1781. As you can see if you look at the picture enlarged, it is very “studied”. At top right there is a statuette of Apollo, symbolically representing the family’s musicality. The father is holding a violin and has a pen and ink-stand near him: because Leopold was a musician and a man of letters. His face and that of his son are on the same level, almost mirroring each other. The figure of the mother looms over them all, in a painting within the painting (because Maria Anna Mozart, née Pertl, died some time earlier, in 1778). And doesn’t Nannerl… apart from the improbable hair-do, seem to you to be in a marginal position? She has about the same prominence in the composition as her father’s violin – a very important object, almost sacred, as every musical instrument, but still an object and not a human being.

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Five years later, in 1785, this is Nannerl in a portrait that is generally considered authentic, although the artist is not known. I like it very much. Here too, as in the last picture, the hair-do is rather weird, but at least it doesn’t look as though it has been styled with an electric saw.

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

This is the most famous portrait of the father of the family, Leopold Mozart (1719-1787). It was probably painted by the artist Pietro Antonio Lorenzoni, in Salzburg, around 1775.

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

This portrait of Mozart has remained unfinished. His brother-in-law, Joseph Lange (1751-1831) started it in 1789, two years before the Maestro’s death.

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

On the other hand, this portrait was painted many years after the death of the great composer, in 1819, and is perhaps the most universally recognised and loved – this is the image that, in some way, everyone has in mind. It was commissioned from Barbara Krafft (1764-1825) by a Viennese musical association. The painter probably used the family portrait above as a model. In any case, it was Nannerl Mozart who made available all the images of her dead brother so that the artist could create a likeness that was as faithful as possible to the extraordinary man that was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.