In this portrait count Anton Franz de Paula Lamberg-Sprinzenstein at the age of thirty is shown as an elegant and self-assured figure. His aristocratic appearance and fine features were captured on canvas by Christian Kollonitsch in 1770. On his death more than fifty years later, the count left his private collection of more than seven hundred paintings to the Academy of Fine Arts. Even during the counts lifetime his superb collection was praised in a travel account:

"Small but extremely choice and almost entirely devoted to the Dutch school. The largest number of these paintings are by outstanding masters and of these most are outstanding pieces."

The young count gazing at us with a lofty expression had taken up diplomacy as a profession. As an imperial envoy he spent several years at the courts in Naples and Turin. During his stay in Italy, he began to buy paintings, but the main part of his collection was acquired after his return to Vienna. In those years he maintained personal contact to artist at the Vienna Academy.

The opulent frame that surrounds Lambergs portrait was donated by Klemens Lothar Wenzel Prince Metternich in the year 1834 in his compacity as protector of the Academy. It was he who nominated Lamberg as president of the academic council, a function the count carried out in the last years of his life.