Maria Luisa of Spain
1745 – 1792 · Generation XVII · Consort
Maria Luisa (1745 – 1792). Consort. Married Leopold in 1765. Daughter of Charles III of Spain; wife of Leopold II. Born at Portici while her father reigned in Naples, she moved to Spain when he took its crown in 1759. A match with Joseph II fell through when Louis XV pressed for his own granddaughter, and she was instead wed by proxy to Leopold in Madrid in February 1764, renouncing her Spanish rights. Days after the ceremony in person at Innsbruck, Emperor Francis’s death made Leopold grand duke of Tuscany, and the couple spent twenty-five years at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, where she won affection by bringing food and medical aid to the poor in the famine of 1765. Warm where he was cool, she bore his infidelities without complaint, shunned court ceremony and devoted herself to their sixteen children. Empress from 1790, she outlived her husband by less than three months. The story that she dismissed Mozart’s coronation opera as “German rubbish” cannot be traced before 1871.
Place in the family
- Maria Luisa of Spain was a great-grandmother of Franz Joseph I of Austria.
- The archive records 14 of her descendants, across 8 generations.
Partners
- Married Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor (1747 – 1792) in 1765 — 2 children together
Children
- Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor (1768 – 1835)
- Ferdinand III, Grand Duke of Tuscany (1769 – 1824)
Life
- 1745 — Born
- 1765 — Married Leopold
- 1792 — Died