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This life-size state portrait shows August the Strong’s wife, Christiane Eberhardine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth. Wearing a red velvet cloak with ermine trim and a gold dress, and with the royal and electoral insignia on the table next to her, she is represented as Electress of Saxony and Queen of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Christiane Eberhardine was 21 years old in 1693 when she married the future Elector of Saxony, Friedrich August the First, known as August the Strong. The couple’s only child was born in 1696: Friedrich August, heir to the throne. That same month, August the Strong’s first official mistress, Aurora von Königsmarck, also gave birth to a son. August was rarely at home, and he had a string of constantly changing favourites. To cut a long story short, his wife, Christiane Eberhardine, was so insulted that the royal couple rapidly became estranged.

Christiane Eberhardine was stunned when, as a matter of political calculation, August the Strong converted to Roman Catholicism in his bid to win the crown of Poland. She herself persistently refused to convert and be crowned Queen of Poland, and she never set foot on Polish soil. A further blow was the separation from her son, who was sent on his Grand Tour in 1711 and soon also converted to Catholicism.

 

After 1700, when political tensions were running high, August the Strong accepted that his wife would keep to her Protestant faith. He saw this as a good way of dispelling the concerns of his Saxon subjects about being forced to return to the fold of the Catholic Church – and of keeping the peace within the country. Christiane Eberhardine fulfilled her duties as consort and put in an appearance at important ceremonial occasions in Dresden.

Otherwise, however, she devoted herself in detail to upgrading her palace of Pretzsch, north of Torgau, where she established her own, largely independent court. There, she fostered a remarkable flowering of cultural life, supporting court music in particular. She also became involved in educating and training the daughters of other Protestant royal and noble families. They included Charlotte Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, who married the son of Tsar Peter the Great in Torgau in 1711. Christiane Eberhardine died in 1727 at the age of 55.