Anna of Austria (7 July 1528 – 16 October 1590), a member of the Imperial House of Habsburg, was Duchess of Bavaria from 1550 until 1579, by her marriage with Duke Albert V.
Young Anna was engaged several times as a child, first to Prince Theodor of Bavaria (1526–1534), the eldest son of Duke William IV, then to Charles d'Orléans (1522–1545). However, both died at a young age.
Anna and her husband Albert playing chess, painting by Hans Muelich (1552)
Anna finally married on 4 July 1546 in Regensburg at the age of 17, Prince Albert V, the younger brother of her first fiancé. The wedding gift was 50,000 Guilder. This marriage was part of a web of alliances in which her uncle Emperor Charles V hoped to secure Duke William's support before embarking on the Schmalkaldic Wars.[2] Indeed, Duke William, though he remained formally neutral, granted the passage of Imperial troops to march against the forces of the Schmalkaldic League which besieged the Ingolstadt fortress.
After their marriage, the young couple lived at the Trausnitz Castle in Landshut, until Albert became duke upon his father's death on 7 March 1550. At the Munich Residenz, Anna and Albert had great influence on the spiritual life in the Duchy of Bavaria, and enhanced the reputation of Munich as a city of art, by founding several museums and laying the foundations for the Bavarian State Library.
Anna and Albert were also patrons to the painter Hans Muelich and the Franco-Flemish composer Orlande de Lassus. In 1552, the duke commissioned an inventory of the jewelry in the couple's possession. The resulting manuscript, still held by the Bavarian State Library, was the Jewel Book of the Duchess Anna of Bavaria ("Kleinodienbuch der Herzogin Anna von Bayern"), and contains 110 drawings by Hans Muelich.[3]
When her husband died on 24 October 1579 and was succeeded by his eldest surviving son, William V, Anna as duchess dowager maintained her own court at the Munich Residenz. 150 years after her death in 1590, her descendant Elector Charles Albert of Bavaria used her marriage treaty with Albert as a pretext to claim the Austrian and Bohemian crown lands of the Habsburg monarchy.
Children
The marriage of Anna and Albert produced the following children:
^Sutter Fichtner, Paula (April 1976). "Dynastic Marriage in Sixteenth-Century Habsburg Diplomacy and Statecraft: An Interdisciplinary Approach". The American Historical Review. 81 (2): 243–265 [247]. doi:10.2307/1851170. JSTOR1851170.
^Boureau, Alain (1995). The Lord's First Night: The Myth of the Droit de Cuissage. Translated by Cochrane, Lydia G. The University of Chicago Press. p. 96.
^Noubel, P., ed. (1877). Revue de l'Agenais [Review of the Agenais]. Vol. 4. Société académique d'Agen. p. 497.
Generations are numbered by male-line descent from Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor. Later generations are included although Austrian titles of nobility were abolished and outlawed in 1919.
