Moritz Michael Daffinger (1790 - 1849)

After initial instruction in drawing with his father, porcelain painter Johann Leopold Daffinger, and his stepfather, Johann Philipp Krug, in 1801 Moritz started an apprenticeship in the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory. His talent earned him a scholarship at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied from 1802 until 1809. Aged only 16, he received his first portrait commissions, initially on porcelain, then on ivory. Until 1812 he executed historical and mythological scenes in the porcelain manufactory. Now a successful freelance painter, after his mother’s deaththat year he renounced his share of the inheritance in favour of his siblings. Daffinger commissioned a portrait from Jean-Baptiste Isabey in order to study the latter’s technique of painting on ivory. In 1819 he copied works by Thomas Lawrence, who was currently working in Vienna, and who remained his lifelong model for pictorial structure, colouration and background. Esteemed by the aristocracy as a portraitist, privately he painted plants, though never a floral still life. Long after his death in 1849, his remains were transferred to a grave of honour in Vienna’s main cemetery.

Author: Ducke Astrid

Literature: Ducke Astrid, Habersatter Thomas (Hrsg. I ed.): Face to Face. Österreichische Porträtmalerei des 19. Jahrhunderts. 19th-century Austrian portrait painting. Residenzgalerie Salzburg I DomQuartier Salzburg 6.6.-29.9.2025. Salzburg 2025, S. I p. 164