Portrait of Emmanuel Rio
Schindler, Albert (1805-1861)
Additional titles
Portrait of a gardener and horn player in the household of the Emperor Francis I
- Art Institute of Chicago
[Museum inv. no.: 2005.153]
Item location
Description
From the Art Institute of Chicago website:Previously known only as “a gardener and horn player,” research has identified the figure in this painting as Emmanuel Rio, an enslaved Brazilian of African descent who had been sent to Emperor Francis I in Vienna around 1820. Rio, who was around ten years old when he arrived in Vienna, was enrolled in an elite private school where he excelled in French, Italian, drawing, and especially music. Francis fostered his talent, gifting Rio a French horn on the occasion of his graduation. Despite his aptitude for music, Rio was assigned to work in the Imperial Garden.
In this portrait, produced a year after the emperor’s death, Rio holds his favored instrument while looking at an image of Francis, beneath which hangs a gold watch that had been a gift from the monarch. The painting’s sentimentality does little to suggest the precariousness of its subject’s situation in Vienna, which only worsened after Francis died. For the rest of his life, Viennese officials moved Rio to various positions throughout Europe, threatened him with forced military service when he resisted, and, by the late 1840s, discussed sending him back to Brazil or to Africa.
Instruments [MIMO Code] (notes)
Valve horn [4133]RIdIM images
Image URLs
image link 1Bibliographic references
Groom, Gloria. “Portrait of a Gardener and Horn Player in the Household of the Emperor Francis I”, Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 32/1 (2006) 58–59.Marvoka, Ina and Walter Sauer. “Waldhornblasender Gärtner: Ein schwarzer Brasilianer im vormärzlichen Österreich. Oder: Vom Wilden zum Weltbürger und wieder zurück?”, Wiener Geschichtsblätter 66/2 (2011) 95–110.