Daffinger was born in
Vienna on 25 January 1790. He was the son of Johann Daffinger (1748–1796), a painter at the local
Vienna Porcelain Manufactory. The eleven-year-old likewise was accepted as an apprentice and later went on to study at the
Academy of Fine Arts, where he took painting lessons with
Heinrich Füger. He returned to work at the factory as one of its leading painters. From 1809 he worked only on
portraits, specializing in
miniature painting on ivory, and small
gouaches on paper. In 1812, he was employed as a portraitist by the
Austrian Foreign Minister,
Klemens von Metternich, and became curator of the extensive portrait collection of Metternich's third wife, Princess Melanie. In 1819, he painted a portrait of Metternich's daughter,
Klementine, posed as the goddess
Hebe. He was influenced by
Jean-Baptiste Isabey and even more strongly by the English portrait painter
Thomas Lawrence, who visited Vienna in 1819. In his late years, he concentrated on the painting of flowers. Daffinger died on 21 August 1849 during a
cholera epidemic in Vienna and was buried in the
St. Marx Cemetery. In 1912, his remains were transferred to a
grave of honor () in the Vienna
Zentralfriedhof. Daffinger left more than a thousand portraits, many of which were owned by the Austrian imperial
House of Habsburg-Lorraine. His portrait graced the obverse of the Austrian 20-
schilling banknote that circulated until the introduction of the
euro in 1999. ==Gallery==