| Maria Luisa of Spain | |||||
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 Portrait byAnton Raphael Mengs, 1770 | |||||
| Holy Roman Empress | |||||
| Tenure | 30 September 1790 – 1 March 1792 | ||||
| Grand Duchess consort of Tuscany | |||||
| Tenure | 18 August 1765 – 20 February 1790 | ||||
| Born | (1745-11-24)24 November 1745 Palace of Portici,Naples,Kingdom of Naples | ||||
| Died | 15 May 1792(1792-05-15) (aged 46) Hofburg Palace,Vienna,Archduchy of Austria,Holy Roman Empire | ||||
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| House | Bourbon | ||||
| Father | Charles III of Spain | ||||
| Mother | Maria Amalia of Saxony | ||||
Infanta Maria Luisa of Spain (Spanish:María Luisa,German:Maria Ludovika; 24 November 1745 – 15 May 1792) was Holy Roman Empress, German Queen, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, and Grand Duchess of Tuscany as the spouse ofLeopold II, Holy Roman Emperor.[1]
Maria Luisa was born inPortici, inCampania, the site of the summer palace (Reggia di Portici) of her parents,Charles, King of Naples and Sicily, andMaria Amalia of Saxony on 24 November 1745, on her mother's 21st birthday. She was the fifth daughter, and second surviving child, of her parents.
Her father, the futureCharles III of Spain, had become King of Naples and Sicily in 1735 after its occupation by the Spanish in theWar of Polish Succession. After her father became King of Spain at the death of her half-uncle,Ferdinand VI of Spain, in 1759, she became known asInfanta Maria Luisa of Spain, and she moved with her family to Spain.
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Maria Luisa was originally intended to marry the future EmperorJoseph II, but this was stopped owing to the disapproval ofLouis XV of France, who instead wished for Joseph to marry his granddaughter,Isabella of Parma.
On 16 February 1764 she was married by proxy atMadrid toLeopold, the third son of EmpressMaria Theresa andFrancis II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and theheir apparent to theGrand Duchy of Tuscany. Before her marriage, she was made to renounce her rights to the throne of Spain by the wishes of her father. After her wedding by proxy, she travelled toAustria by way ofBarcelona,Genoa andBolzano. The next year, on 5 August, she married him in person atInnsbruck. Only a few days later, the death of Emperor Francis made Maria Luisa's husband the new Grand Duke of Tuscany, and the newly married couple moved toFlorence, where they would live for the next twenty-five years. The couple arrived in Florence 13 September 1765. They were settled in thePalazzo Pitti.
At the time of her wedding, Maria Luisa was described as a blue-eyed beauty with a vivid charm, unpretentious and simple and with a disposition to be generous and kind, and her natural warm friendliness was said to have contrasted to the somewhat cold nature of Leopold.[2] Through her strict Catholic upbringing, Maria Luisa was raised to endure any hardship of pregnancy and marriage without complaint, a role she fulfilled during her marriage.[3] The relationship between Maria Luisa and Leopold has been described as happy, and Maria Luisa as a supporting and loyal wife. She accepted the infidelities of her spouse without complaint: among his best known lovers wereLady Anna Gore Cowper, and another was the ballerinaLivia Raimondi, with whom he had a son,Luigi von Grün (1788–1814), and he gave her her own palace atPiazza San Marco, Florence.
As grand duchess of Tuscany, Maria Luisa made herself appreciated in the first year in Florence, during the famine of 1765, when she provided the poor and needing with food and medical aid, and she was referred to as an ideal "model of feminine virtue".[4] She was never crowned as grand duchess, though she was present at the coronation of Leopold in July 1768. She accompanied her sister-in-law, Maria Carolina of Austria, at the latter's marriage to her brother, KingFerdinand IV of Naples: the couple remained there for the summer of 1768. In 1770, she accompanied Leopold on his visit to Vienna. Neither Maria Luisa nor Leopold enjoyed formal occasions and rarely participated in representation or indeed upheld much of a ceremonial court life at all; while Leopold spent his time with politics and his personal pleasures, Maria Luisa isolated herself almost completely from high society and devoted herself completely to the upbringing of her children.[5] Maria Luisa and her spouse gave their children a very free upbringing, away from any formal court life, and occasionally took them on trips to the countryside and the coast. She remained mostly unknown to the local aristocracy, and restricted her private social life to a very small circle of friends.[6]
In 1790, on the death of Leopold's childless brother,Joseph II, Maria Luisa's husband inherited theHabsburg monarchy in Central Europe, and was shortly thereafterelected Holy Roman Emperor. Taking the name of Leopold II, the new emperor moved his family toVienna, where Maria Luisa took on the role of imperial consort, being the penultimate Holy Roman Empress and the last to have had held the title until her husband's death. Leopold died scarcely two years later, on 1 March 1792. Maria Luisa followed her husband to the grave in less than three months, not living long enough to see her eldest son Francis elected as the last Holy Roman Emperor. She was buried next to her husband in theCapuchin Crypt. Her urn is located in theLoreto Chapel of the ViennaAugustinerkirche, her entrails in theDucal Crypt. Maria Luisa is one of those 41 people who received a "Separated Funeral" with a division of the body into all three traditional Viennese burial places of the Habsburgs (Imperial Crypt,Herzgruft,Herzogsgruft).
Mozart's operaLa clemenza di Tito was commissioned by the Estates ofBohemia as part of the festivities that accompanied thecoronation of Maria Luisa and her husband Leopold as king and queen ofBohemia inPrague on 6 September 1791. In musical circles, Maria Luisa is famous for her putative denigration of Mozart's opera, which she supposedly dismissed as "una porcheria tedesca" (Italian for "German rubbish"), however no claim that she made this remark pre-dates the publication in 1871 ofAlfred Meissner'sRococo-Bilder: nach Aufzeichnungen meines Grossvaters, a collection of stories about cultural and political life in Prague in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.[7]
Media related toMaria Luisa of Spain at Wikimedia Commons
Maria Luisa of Spain Cadet branch of theCapetian dynasty Born: 24 November 1745 Died: 15 May 1792 | ||
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| Preceded by | Grand Duchess consort of Tuscany 1765–1790 | Succeeded by |
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| Preceded by | Holy Roman Empress 1790–1792 | Succeeded by |
| German Queen 1790–1792 | ||
| Vacant Title last held by Elisabeth Christine ofBrunswick-Wolfenbüttel | Queen consort ofHungary andBohemia 1790–1792 | |
| Archduchess consort of Austria 1790–1792 | ||
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