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Besides a few visits to his home country, Sándor (Alexander) Liezen-Mayer, who was born in Győr, Hungary, spent his entire life in Munich, where he was a much respected professor at the Academy. He painted this study as a young man in Karl Piloty's class in 1862. Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary at the Sarcophagus of Louis Anjou the Great of Hungary is a courageous, though avowedly theatrical composition built on the contrast between the splendid coronation ceremony of Small Charles of Durazzo, scene in the background, and graveness of the two queens vowing vengeance at the grave of King Louis the Great. The sinister atmosphere of the painting is a reference to the bloody fights resulting from the event depicted, which occurred in 1383 at Székesfehérvár.
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