Josepha Conti

Josepha Conti née Josepha Reh (17 February 1825 – 28 November 1881) was a Bavarian servant and beauty of the 19th century.^[1]

Josepha Conti's portrait, painted in 1844 by Joseph Karl Stieler, in the Gallery of Beauties.

Life

Born in Munich as the eldest daughter of the household servant Michael Reh, she was married aged 15 to a 45-year-old painter Anton Conti in 1840. They lived on Briennerstrasse in Munich, near the Royal Residenz, thus becoming known to Ludwig I of Bavaria, who included her in his Gallery of Beauties. Her husband had left her by 1845, but she then worked (from 1850 to 1852) as a maker of canvases for the royal court. In 1856, she married Anton Schirsner, District Council in the Munich district of Au, with whom she had a child.^[1]