Mozart's Portrait on a French Box of Sweets

A rare box with a silver mounted miniature painting of a child with a cherubic face, wearing a wig and a red coat of nobility was discovered in Salzburg in 2018. It is a French bonbonniere made of papier-mâché and tortoiseshell. Could this be a portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart from when he first performed for King Louis XV in Paris? The detective trail leads the author, who consulted with numerous experts, to Salzburg, Munich, Vienna and Paris. Laboratory testing confirms the authenticity of the lacquered baroque box of sweets, and the miniature upon it. Stefaan Missinne has discovered the linking orphic attribute in its silver mounting. The facial biometrics confirm it is a ten-year-old. Mozart was ten in 1766. The author endorses the box to be a unique Louis XV box of sweets, suggesting tribute to W. A. Mozart as an Austrian child prodigy. The portrait affirms the affective and visual bond between Mozart's immortal musical skills and an anonymous, admiring French lady.

Stefaan Missinne was born into a Belgian musical family. He lives in Lower Austria near Vienna and received his PhD from the Economics University in Social and Economic Sciences in Vienna in 1990. He is the author of several academic art historically essays and articles. Recent publication: "The Da Vinci Globe" (2018)

Introduction Description of the portrait and the box Miniature portraits of Mozart Mozart and his stays in Paris Primary sources on boxes in Mozart's letters Mozart, musical instruments and notes in miniatures and paintings Iconographic decoration of the silver mounting and on the outside pattern of the round box Interlaced orphic ornaments from classical antiquity and their appearance in late XVIII century artifacts and frontispieces of printed music editions of Haydn and Mozart Allegory of music on a mechanical golden wedding box dating from 1768 Post-mortem iconographic elements including the reference to Mozart as the death of Orpheus Some thoughts with regard to a potential attribution of the artist who painted the portrait Paediatric osteological approach Conclusion Acknowledgements References Index List of Pictures

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