Robert Mapplethorpe

Francesca Thyssen

1981

© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

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Not on display

Artist: Robert Mapplethorpe 1946–1989
Medium: Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper
Dimensions: Support: 441 × 341 mm
frame: 714 × 587 × 39 mm
Collection: ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland
Acquisition: ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008
Reference: AR00156

Online caption

Francesca Thyssen is the daughter of the art collector, the late Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza, and the Scottish model, Fiona Campbell-Walter. In 1993 she married Archduke Karl von Habsburg, but they later separated. Francesca von Habsburg (as she is now called) lives in Vienna and, like her father, collects art on a grand scale. Mapplethorpe portrays her in a costume that makes her look like a woman in an early Netherlandish painting or a figure out of the Arabian Nights.