According to Yahoo Music on Jan. 11, an 18th century portrait of a round-faced young boy with a thick head of hair that has puzzled experts for centuries is actually Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, child prodigy and world-famous composer.
It was announced by researchers at Salzburg’s Mozarteum Foundation (Stiftung Mozarteum) that the portrait is definitely Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Christoph Grosspietch, a Mozart expert, says the museum’s findings are based on historical records and close examination of the portrait. Grosspietch said that it was also concluded that another portrait of a young boy holding a bird’s nest, previously thought to be Mozart, is not.
There are 14 known portraits of Mozart in existence. This portrait is one of only a very few that show the young boy looking straight at the viewer. He is not wearing his signature white powdered wig in the portrait.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born Jan. 27, 1756 in Salzburg, Austria. He was a child prodigy who began playing in public at six years old. Mozart had a varied career in the courts of Europe and composed hundreds of works including sonatas, symphonies, masses, concertos and operas. Some of those operas were written in Mozart’s native German, a sacrilege at the time as most librettos were written in Italian.
Sadly, Mozart’s life was short. The composer died in December 1791 at the age of 35, probably from some type of rheumatic fever, a disease that had plagued him throughout his life. Destitute at the time of his death, he was buried in a common grave even though, at the time of his death, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was considered one of the greatest composers of all time.
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