The six handshakes rule says that everyone is connected to each other in a maximum of six steps. A good example is the painter Franz Xaxer Winterhalter, who died on 8 July 1873 and who is mainly known for his famous paintings of Empress Sisi of Austria. Are you ready for his six steps?

The first step is the French Revolution and its consequences. On 14 July 1789 the revolution started with the storming of the Bastille in Paris. King Louis XVI of France and Queen Marie-Antoinette, a Habsburg by birth, were hounded from the throne, arrested, sentenced and guillotined. This revolution and his personal talent enabled a young Corsican officer named Napoleon Bonaparte to achieve an unprecedented rise: with his army he conquered Europe, made himself Emperor of the French and reordered the continent.

Which brings us to the second step, because this reorganisation also included the secularisation of the churches. The Benedictine monastery of St. Blasien in the Upper Black Forest was also affected by this. Most of the monks joined other monasteries. One of them, however, became a parish priest and teacher in the small town of Menzenschwand. The two farmers’ sons Franz Xaver and Hermann Winterhalter also sat in his classes.

The pastor noticed a special talent in the brothers: they were both good at painting, which leads us to the third step: The Herder publishing house in Freiburg. The priest advised the father of the two boys to have them trained there as draughtsmen and graphic artists.

Equipped with his talent, Franz Xaver applied to the Munich Academy, the fourth step, towards the end of his apprenticeship. He was accepted, made the leap to oil painting and applied to the Grand Duke of Baden for a scholarship with a letter and two pictures. Well, the scholarship was granted to him and first contacts to courts were made.

After his training in Munich, Franz Xaver Winterhalter was appointed to the fifth step: He became court painter to the Grand Duke of Baden. It is important to know that the Dowager Grand Duchess of Baden was an adopted daughter of the above-mentioned Napoleon I. She had the best contacts in Paris and supported the young artist, who did not stay long at the Baden court. He went to Paris.

There, Winterhalter soon painted Louise, Queen of the Belgians. She was – like the two guillotined monarchs from the first step – a member of the House of Bourbon, and thus related to all European royal houses. She gave Winterhalter access to her relatives at the courts of Europe. He became the most important painter of rulers’ paintings of his time. Queen Victoria had her entire family painted by him. The Romanovs were portrayed by him, as were the Habsburgs, the Bonapartes and many others.

Paris thus became Winterhalter’s sixth step, the circle is completed. For the rest of his life, he travelled from residence to residence. He painted the descendants of the guillotined as well as the descendants of the revolutionaries.