Portrait executed at Paris, fall-winter 1763-1764; copies: Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Inv. Nr. D. 4496; York, Castle Howard; privately owned.
The earliest reference to Carmontelle’s portrait of Leopold Mozart and his children, and to an engraving based on it, derives from Leopold’s letter of 1 April 1764 to Johann Lorenz Hagenauer: ‘M. de Mechel, an engraver on copper, is working flat out to engrave the excellent portraits that Herr von Carmontelle /: an amateur :/ has painted. Wolfg. is playing the keyboard, I am standing behind his chair and playing the violin, and Nannerl is resting one arm on the clavecin. With the other hand she is holding a score as if singing. The earliest known advertisement for the engraving (sold together with the sonatas K6-9) appears to be L’Avant Coureur, Paris, 21 January 1765, 42-43:
To be had at Monsieur BORDET, author & seller of music, at [the sign of] “la musique moderne” rue St. Honoré, vis à vis the Palais Royal, between the rue St. Thomas du Louvre & des Quinze- Vingts: two books for the keyboard composed by J. G. W. Mozart, aged 7.
The first work by this child, who received the admiration of all Paris last winter & who since then has had no less success in London, contains the sonatas dedicated to Madame Victoire de France.
The second contains the sonatas dedicated to Madame Countess de Tessé. The price of each opus is 4 livres 4 sols; but only a few exemplars are left, as the edition is nearly sold out and the plates are no longer in France.
Those who wish to include a portrait of the young author will find it at the same address. Price 24 sols.
It shows the child master playing the keyboard, his sister next to him looking at a page of music, & his father behind him accompanying on the violin; the resemblance is perfect.
This print is engraved after the drawing by M. de Carmontelle. (Edge and Salmon)
To be had at Monsieur BORDET, author & seller of music, at [the sign of] “la musique moderne” rue St. Honoré, vis à vis the Palais Royal, between the rue St. Thomas du Louvre & des Quinze- Vingts: two books for the keyboard composed by J. G. W. Mozart, aged 7.
The first work by this child, who received the admiration of all Paris last winter & who since then has had no less success in London, contains the sonatas dedicated to Madame Victoire de France.
The second contains the sonatas dedicated to Madame Countess de Tessé. The price of each opus is 4 livres 4 sols; but only a few exemplars are left, as the edition is nearly sold out and the plates are no longer in France.
Those who wish to include a portrait of the young author will find it at the same address. Price 24 sols.
It shows the child master playing the keyboard, his sister next to him looking at a page of music, & his father behind him accompanying on the violin; the resemblance is perfect.
This print is engraved after the drawing by M. de Carmontelle.
The most widely-circulated image of Mozart at the time, the engraving — possibly by Delafosse, who signed the plate, not Mechel — was generally available throughout France, England, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Holland until 1778; it was sold both separately and together with the printed editions of Mozart’s sonatas K6-9, in a slightly later English engraving with K10-15, and in Holland with K26-31.
It is possible that other versions — sometimes of Leopold, Mozart or Nannerl Mozart individually — also circulated in the 1760s. According to the Regensburgisches Diarium for 18 March 1766: ‘Zu verkaufen. Bey dem Küster Schmid ist zu haben: 1) Portrait des Herrn Capellmeisters Mozart, von Salzburg, fol. à 30 kr. 2) – seines Hrn. Sohns von 9 Jahren, der ein geschickter Compositeur und ein fürtrefflicher Meister in der Violine ist, fol. à 30 kr. 3) – seiner Mademoiselle Tochter, von 10 Jahren, welche eine der größten Meisterin auf dem Clavier ist, fol. à 30 kr. Diese 3 Personen befinden sich Dato in Londen, und sind, wegen ihrer Stärke in der Music, allda in grossen Ansehen.’[1] Johann Michael Schmid (c1713-1692) was sexton at the evangelical Dreifaltigkeitskirche in Regensburg, as well as a music dealer. The description of Mozart as 9 years old squares well with the comment that the family was at the time in London and, accordingly, the earliest English versions of the Delafosse engraving; Nannerl, in 1764, was twelve years old.
[1] Dieter Haberl, Das Regensburgische Diarium (Intelligenzblatt) als musikhistorische Quelle. Erschlieβung der Jahrgänge 1760-1810 (Regensburg, 2012), 63.
