This video promises to be about the portrait titled Elisabeth of Bavaria, Empress of Austria by Franz Xaver Winterhalter. And it is, although it is also so much more. The YouTuber Art Deco tells the story of Empress Elisabeth, colloquially known as Sisi, to give context to the painting.
All I knew about Sisi was that her wedding dress was lost and undocumented, and that her son killed himself and his lover. You might know more, thanks to the Netflix series The Empress. In this video, we get an overview of Sisi's fairytale life that was quite difficult underneath. Her royal status robbed her of any independence and led to an eating disorder so that she could exert control over the only thing she could -her own image. Winterhalter's several portraits of Sisi were a carefully crafted perception of the empress, although he herself did most of the crafting.