Hollitzer Publishing House: Oldest Miniature of W.A. Mozart dating from 1766 discovered One of the oldest fan articles in the history of music

In 2018, a French round box of candy was discovered in an antique shop in Salzburg. On its lid it portrays a young boy, wearing a wig and a red aristocratic coat. The Belgian Professor Stefaan Missinne spent two years investigating the miniature and the box dating from 1766: Missinne concludes that it is a hitherto unknown French portrait of the 10-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The Viennese Hollitzer publishing company released the book with the title - Mozart's Portrait on a french Box of Sweets - early July. The author offers evidence that it is a unique baroque Vernis Martin box of candy with a portrait of Mozart.

The provenance of the box is Paris. It is made of papier-mâché and tortoise shell. On it is the painting of a detailed portrait of the young Mozart, dressed in a red conductor's coat.

The detective search led Missinne to Salzburg, Paris, Munich and Vienna. He consulted with more than 50 Mozart experts, museum curators and collectors. Laboratory tests indeed confirmed the authenticity of the lacquered baroque box and the portrait miniature in a silver filigree mounting on it.

Stefaan Missinne, a member of the American Mozart Society, discovered in the painting's hand-engraved silver mounting the unifying iconographic, orphic musical attribute of the Austrian child prodigy. The facial biometrics of the portrait based on the Martin-Saller scale confirm that it is a ten-year-old. Mozart was ten years old when he was in Paris in 1766. The book is available in any major online store or at www.hollitzer.at