Archduke Rainer of Austria and group

A carte-de-visite portrait of Archduke Rainer of Austria with his wife, Archduchess Maria Carolina, and three other, as yet unidentified, sitters. The two unidentified men are possibly two of the Archduke’s brothers, the unidentified woman presumably the wife of one of them.

Archduke Rainer Ferdinand Maria Johann Evangelist Franz Ignaz, Prince Imperial and Archduke of Austria, Prince Royal of Hungary and Bohemia, was born in Vienna on 11 January 1827, the 4th son of Archduke Rainer of Austria (1783-1853), who was himself the 14th child of Emperor Leopold II, who was the 9th child of Empress Maria Theresa. On 21 February 1852, he married at Vienna Archduchess Maria Carolina.

Archduke Rainer died at Vienna on 27 January 1913.

Photographed by Camille Silvy of London on 5 August 1861.

The Victoria and Albert Museum has an uncut sheet of cartes-de-visite from this sitting. A pencilled inscription on its reverse identifies the sitters as 'Comte Schoenkirchen et famille'.