Portratgalerien auf Papier: Sammeln und Ordnen von druckgrafischen Portrats am Beispiel Kaiser Franz’ I. von Osterreich und anderer furstlicher Sammler

In the 18th century, the collecting of printed portraits was increasingly appreciated by an educated middle-class class of collectors. Aristocratic collectors also kept portrait collections of their ancestors and contemporaries in adhesive tapes or cassettes, which sometimes could contain up to 100,000 individual portraits. While Prince Eugene of Savoy, for example, had his collection arranged by art dealers, Emperor Franz I of Austria or Louis-Philippe I .of France spent a lot of time putting her portraits into an ideal order themselves.One encounters classifications according to states, professions or historical epochs - depending on the demands that the collector made of his collection. The system of order thus became the medium of princely representation.