*30.05.1653 Innsbruck  -  †08.04.1676 Vienna

Empress of the Holy Roman Empire

Archduchess of Austria

Queen of Hungary

Queen of Bohemia

Claudia Felicitas was the daughter of Archduke Ferdinand Karl and Anna de Medici; after the death of Empress Margarita Teresa in 1673, she was married to Emperor Leopold I., her second-degree cousin, in the same year.

The marriage by proxy in Innsbruck was soon followed by the actual wedding in Graz. It was an expression of the unity of the two Habsburg lines.

The Swedish ambassador Esaias Pufendorf wrote of Claudia Felicitas: “The current empress is a well-built person with a quick and lively mind, so that she can lift her lord out of his gloomy moods and put him in a good humor; she is held in high esteem by him, especially since she shares his love of music and hunting and also plays instruments and sings herself.”

Half a dozen doctors – including the famous Italian miracle doctor Borri – were unable to cure Claudia Felicitas of her tuberculosis. She died “with no other support than God and the angels,” as the Venetian ambassador Michiele, an admirer of her beauty and intelligence, reported back home.

Leopold mourned her death with a piece of funeral music he composed himself.

At her own request, she was buried in the Dominican monastery in Postgasse, dressed in the habit of the order, where she rests next to her mother, Anna de' Medici.