Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/660799
B Y A N N E L E E P H I L L I P S. P R O D U C E D B Y M I C H E L L E AV I Ñ A . P H OTO G R A P H Y J AY TO VA R . H A I R A N D M A K E U P TO N YA R I N E R . GROWING HABSBURG Tatiana Galitzine photographed at the Houston home of her parents, Princess Maria Anna Galitzine and Prince Piotr Galitzine. No. 21 dress, at Laboratoria, Neiman Marcus. At a seated dinner last year celebrating the blockbuster exhibition "Habsburg Splendor: Masterpieces from Vienna's Imperial Collections," the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, displayed 100 opulent objects and paintings collected by the royal Viennese Habsburg family over six centuries. While the gilded bridal sleigh was spectacular, it was a young woman perusing the exhibit that held my attention. HER POISE WAS UNMISTAKABLE. T hen she stood for a photograph in front of the Andreas Möller portrait (circa 1727) of a young Archduchess Maria Theresa, who became the Holy Roman Empress and gave birth to Marie Antoinette. The family resemblance was undeniable. The young woman even wore the same striking shade of teal in a modern shift dress paired with statement diamond earrings. MFAH director Gary Tinterow confirmed suspicions when he addressed the crowd of donors and trustees: A number of Habsburg descendants, he proclaimed, are "alive and well and living in Houston, Texas." Our Houston Habsburg is Tatiana Galitzine, daughter of Princess Maria Anna Galitzine and Prince Piotr Galitzine. Her mother, Maria Anna, is the daughter of Archduke Rudolf of Austria, who was the youngest son of Emperor Charles I of Austria and Empress Zita of Bourbon-Parma, and her father Piotr is a Russian aristocrat. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, we met her at her parents' rental home in River Oaks, where they were perching until they could move to a large new house in Bunker Hill — room enough for all six adult children and a growing number of grandchildren to visit. Tatiana Galitzine's voice was a bit raspy; she had just returned on the red-eye from Istanbul and Germany, where she'd celebrated Oktoberfest. "The idea of Texas was so foreign to me," she says. She had been living in San Francisco for two years when she went through a messy breakup. Her parents had recently moved to Houston and encouraged her to do the same. She was working at the San Francisco firm Andrew Skurman Architects when Gensler in Houston recruited her. "San Francisco is sometimes called the Europe of America, but I found it very cliquey," she says. Feeling she needed a change, she took a leap of faith and moved. HABSBURG BEGINNINGS The Habsburg dynasty ruled for nearly 600 years, from the 15th through the 20th centuries. Charles V (1500–1558) inherited a territory that was the largest European empire since the Romans; he famously remarked that the sun never set on the Habsburg empire. Major contributions to art history are the dynasty's lasting legacy — many members of the family were ardent collectors and generous patrons of the arts. Frederick III (1415–1493) used art to make known his aspiration for Austria to rule the world, and the MFAH exhibition catalog Habsburg Splendor: Masterpieces from Vienna's Imperial Collections at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, edited by Monica Kurzel-Runtscheiner, credits Maximilian (1459–1519) as the "first public-relations professional in European history," as he employed art along with new media such as books to spread his desired image of himself as a hero. Generations of Habsburgs fostered Titian, Jacopo Strada, Peter Paul Rubens and Diego Velázquez. Franz Joseph I (1830–1916) created the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna as the primary repository for the collection. The Habsburg exhibit at the MFAH was the first time Galitzine was able to see her family's expansive art collection together in one place. A heady experience, to be sure, but it was the final room in the exhibit that felt deeply personal to her: It contained her great uncle Otto's outfit he wore to his coronation as crown prince when he was a little boy, a dress of her great-grandmother Zita, and regal family portraits of both Otto and Zita — people she knew merely as family.