Why did Madame Tussaud and Mario Barth team up? To create an 18th century tattoo of course. Madame Tussaud arrived at Barth's tattoo studio in Graz to unveil the creation of the wax figure of Austria's own Empress Sisi and her new tattoo.
June 23, 2020
Mario Barth and Sisi from Madame Tussauds
Barth created the small anchor on Empress Sisi's left shoulder blade. From what is known from historical sources, Empress Elisabeth (1837-1898) had received a tattoo about 10 years before her death in a small room of a harbour dugout. Arabella Kruschinski, managing director of Madame Tussauds in Vienna, traveled to Graz with the 200,000 euro original wax figure. If Empress Elisabeth had lived 180 years later, she would definitely have gone to Mario Barth for her tattoo. She would have demanded the Styrian icon to be the K.U.K. royal tattoo artist, which today operates several tattoo studios in the United States, to pursue his imperial-royal office.
"I would invite her to one of my tattoo studios and she would be given the royal treatment and VIP experience," said Barth after his encounter with the Empress of Austria.
Today, however, Barth would no longer choose the slender single-colored anchor; he would like to tattoo a more realistic looking anchor with a colorful design with an anchor chain of diamonds. "Sisi was a feminist," says Barth, who emphasizes that he never wants to influence his customers in real situations with their choice of tattoos.
With that being said, he didn't need to influence Sisi's biggest fan when she decided to get the same single colored anchor.
After drawing the original on Sisi's left shoulder, Marisa Ortner (Sisi and Barth's biggest fan) received a tattoo from the artist. She is the first to get Mario Barth's Sisi anchor tattoo. She has been a Sisi fan since the musical Elisabeth. Today she has fulfilled two dreams: a tattoo from Mario Barth, which in turns gives her a lifelong connectio with her idol (Sisi).
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