Noble Portraits from the Estate of the Barons Adelstein

Abstract

This article discusses the second set of noble portraits that the National Museum in Ljubljana purchased in 1934 from Jožef Breznik, a landowner at Kog near Ormož, and belonged to the estate of Antonia Kofler, née Baroness Dienersperg, the former owner of Breznik’s property. The eighteen portraits under discussion passed into the hands of the Dienersperg family in 1822, when they inherited or purchased the Adelsteins’ Dobrnica Mansion (Guteneck) near Dobrna. The portraits feature the Adelsteins and their relatives, members of the Attems, Türndl, Gaisruck, and Gabelkoven families. Most individuals portrayed were yet to be identified based on abbreviations, surnames, or circumstances. The majority of oil paintings were produced in Styria, whereas the depictions of four members of the Attems family originated in Gorizia, and one portrait probably in Gotha, Thuringia. Before being transferred to Dobrnica, several portraits were kept at Švarcenštajn Mansion (Schwarzenstein) near Velenje. Only the painter Lorenz Josef Stachl, the author of several portraits from the mid-eighteenth century, is attested directly once, and two of his contemporaneous painters from Gorizia can indirectly be identified as Johann Michael Lichtenreit and Antonio Paroli.