johann wolfgang von goethe, 18131 madonna domesticated: … domesticated madonnas.pdf— johann...

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Goethe was clearly entranced with the image he is describing here, and he was not alone. By the time he wrote these enthusiastic words on August 11, 1813, the painting in question, a life-size vision

of the Madonna and Child by Raphael, housed since 1754 in the splendid Dresden galleries, had become a pilgrim-age site for art lovers and religious devotees alike.2 Removed from its original ecclesiastical context as an altarpiece in the church of Saint Sisto in Piacenza, the painting had arrived in the Saxon capital just in time for Johann Joachim Winck-elmann to include it in his foundational treatise on Euro-pean Neoclassicism, Gedanken über die Nachahmung der grieschischen Werke in der Mahlerey und Bildhauer-Kunst (Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture), published in 1755:

Behold the Madonna! her face brightens with innocence;

a form above the female size, and the calmness of her mien,

make her appear as already beatified: she has that silent

awfulness which the ancients spread over their deities. How

grand, how noble is her Contour! The child in her arms is

elevated above vulgar children, by a face darting the beams

of divinity through every smiling feature of harmless child-

hood. . . . Time, ‘tis true, has withered the primitive splendour

of this picture . . . ; but still the soul, with which the painter

inspired his godlike work, breathes life through all its parts.3

Like Goethe, Winckelmann could not resist the charms of this Renaissance masterpiece.

If these two neo-pagans cherished Raphael’s great work of art for its classicism and debt to antiquity, the younger generation adored it for its spiritual depth. Look-ing at this image of a majestic yet humble young mother, aloof in her divine glory but intimately close by virtue of her earthly, unassuming beauty, the Romantics replaced the dispassionate eye of the Enlightenment connoisseur

with heartfelt piety, effusive emotionality, and sentimen-tal empathy. Many a visitor wept hot tears in front of the Sistine Madonna, as she was called, and artists were no exception. Thus Philipp Otto Runge, that pioneer of Romantic art whose budding talent was cut short by a premature death, found himself shaken to the core in the presence of Raphael’s tender Virgin. For Runge, the canvas marked a threshold, a cultural paradigm shift from the age of Christian history painting to a new era of art, one that he defined as “landscape.”4 “I am intoxicated,” the painter Alfred Rethel similarly exclaimed, and generations of Germans — from Johann Gottfried Herder to Martin Heidegger, from Novalis to Thomas Mann — would share this sentiment.5

The cult of the Sistine Madonna was a quintessen-tially bourgeois phenomenon. It reflected the cultural changes — including the establishment of the modern art museum — ushered in by the rise of a new urban social class to economic and cultural (although not necessarily political) prominence at the end of the eighteenth cen-tury. Dresden stood at the forefront of a long tradition of aristocratic collecting in the German-speaking world, and consequently exemplified a fundamental shift at this time in the purpose of such assemblages. Traditionally, the amassing of precious objects had served primarily as a means of princely self-representation and an expression of regal splendor. By 1800 these older notions had yielded to philanthropic and educational ideals. With their doors opened to a broader audience, art collections were now charged with benefiting the public and serving the people’s common interest.6 The unprecedented access to some of the world’s greatest artistic treasures was vital to the for-mation of taste, aesthetic judgment, and bourgeois identity in the Romantic era. But equally important to this process, if not more so, was the ability to possess these images in the form of reproductive prints.

R a p h a e l’ s S i s t i n e M a d o n n a D o m e s t i c at e d : A R e t u r n t o P u r i t y a n d P i e t y i n G e r m a n P r i n t s

Cordula Grewe

Here you see portrayed, with the most masterful strokes in the world, child and God and mother and Virgin shown at one and the same time in divine transfiguration. The painting alone is a world, an artist’s world complete

in itself, and had its creator painted nothing but this, it alone would make him immortal.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 18131

r a p h a e l’ s s i st i n e m a d o n n a d o m e st i c at e d 54 g r e w e

It was an age of revolution in the world of prints, with new printmaking techniques, new formats — now ranging from elaborate large-scale engravings to hefty illustrated gallery guides and small, handheld almanacs — and new strategies of dissemination. And this revolution made available to the cultivated house-hold and the less prosperous alike what had previously been the nobility’s exclusive domain. Raphael’s Sistine Madonna was an especially coveted image, and numer-ous printmakers would try their hand at its reproduction. Yet only one of the many attempts became itself an icon of almost mythical status: the 1816 engraving by Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Müller (fig. C1).

The artist’s biography is the stuff of Romantic leg-end.7 Afflicted since childhood with a fragile constitution, Müller often suffered from bouts of exhaustion after the completion of a particularly demanding plate. This did not bode well for the outcome of his engraving of the Sistine Madonna, a commission he received in 1808 from the Dresden art dealer Heinrich Rittner. Welcomed by the artist as a sacred duty, a form of worship and prayer, the work failed to instill in him inner calm or meditative resolve. Instead, reproducing the beloved image became a physical and mental strain. Over time Müller’s reli-gious enthusiasm rose to a fever pitch, until the Virgin herself appeared to the frenzied engraver in his state of self-inflicted starvation. (Following this vision, Müller believed that he had a divine mission to petition the king, accompanied by twelve maidens dressed in white, for the creation of an academy dedicated solely to engraving.) In 1816 he finally put the last touches to his Madonna plate, which went off to Paris for printing after problems were encountered at local presses. However, the artist was not to see his finished prints. Shortly after the plate was shipped, he went completely mad. By the time the first impressions arrived in Dresden from Paris, Müller was dead, having committed suicide.8 At his funeral, his

masterwork was displayed prominently behind his bier, an honor that recalled a similar staging three hundred years earlier, when Raphael’s final artistic achievement, the unfinished Transfiguration (now in the Vatican’s Pinacoteca), towered high above the deceased as he lay in state at his house in the Borgo. In death, Müller finally had become one with his revered icon.

Müller’s tragic fate only added to the appeal of his print, which contemporaries hailed as one of the most beautiful achievements of the engraver’s burin.9 Goethe wrote a glowing review; Balzac cited the print in his novel Histoire de la grandeur et de la décadence de César Birotteau; and the young Henry Adams, while traveling in Germany, was so eager to purchase a good example of Müller’s engraving that he found it worthwhile to write home to compare prices in Dresden with those in Boston.10 The popularity of Müller’s achievement did not diminish even after the restoration of Raphael’s painting in 1826 prompted further reproductions, by Auguste Gaspard Louis Desnoyers, Moritz Steinla, and Joseph Keller, among others. Splendid these may have been, but none of the new efforts, as the artist’s great-grandson Berthold Pfeiffer remarked in 1881, received the same artistic consecration enjoyed by Müller’s print, which continued to realize pre-mium prices at auctions.11

In the twenty-first century, an age saturated with colorful images of all sizes and pictorial mediums, moving and otherwise, it is difficult to imagine the tremendous effect of these black-and-white masterpieces on the era’s imagination. But their power cannot be overestimated. Ultimately, it was prints, as Stendhal noted with his usual psychological astuteness, and not museum displays or trav-eling exhibitions, that shaped the century’s visual culture. The French novelist warned his readers about the dangers of buying engravings of the beautiful artifacts they would encounter on their travels, for as he saw it, the reproduc-tive print would soon obliterate the memory of the genuine thing itself. At least, this was what had happened to him: “Müller’s beautiful engraving,” Stendhal mourned, “has destroyed [the Sistine Madonna] for me.”12 In the end, it was not the charms of oil and pigment that provided the nineteenth century with the ultimate image of the Mother

Fig. c1. Johann Friedrich wilhelm müller (german, 1782–1816), after raphael (italian, 1483–1520). The Sistine Madonna, 1808–16. etching and engraving; sheet (cut within platemark) 341/4 x 263/8 inches (87 x 67 cm). the muriel and philip Berman gift, acquired from the pennsylvania academy of the Fine arts, 1985-52-40936


Romantics who hailed the Renaissance artist not for his personal divinity, but for the creation of an oeuvre consid-ered the epitome of Christian art, bestowed upon him the epithet “Saint” Raphael and conflated the sensual painter, despite his reputation as an insatiable womanizer, with the Archangel Raphael.16

Religious revivalism, in contrast, treated art as a handmaiden of religion. Thus, when Johann Friedrich Overbeck reimagined the motif of Dürer and Raphael’s meeting, he placed the two Renaissance men before an allegory of the church, not of art, restoring to religion what he felt was her rightful place.17 For men like Overbeck, the artist was a spiritual crusader, and he appears as such in the opening plate of Ferdinand Olivier’s landscape cycle Sieben Gegenden aus Salzburg und Berchtesgaden (Seven Places in Salzburg and Berchtesgaden; see fig. J8), in which

of God, but the stark outlines, subtle gradations, and gray tonalities delivered in print.

If the cult of the Sistine Madonna was paradigmatic in bringing out the conflict between original work and reproduction, painting and print, public display and private ownership, it was also exemplary in uniting two rivalrous cultural tendencies: aesthetic religion and religious reviv-alism. Both attitudes were vital to the rise of Romanticism and its long aftermath, and both were nurtured by a similar desire: the yearning for a higher truth and for access to the transcendental. Yet the roles that each assigned to art in their mutual pursuit differed fundamentally.13

Aesthetic religion — or what the Germans called Kunstreligion — consecrated art as the sole means of

the clarion call of the church’s militant archangel, Michael, joins Gabriel’s annunciation of the new Gospel of Art. For these reawakened believers, the individual artwork did not replace, but rather represented, the revelations granted by the Christian god. They hoped that the work of art would guide them to divine truth, a desire that in turn kindled a predilection for depicting rituals and moments of religious practice, with prayer and churchgoing becoming favorite themes (fig. C2; see figs. J1, M17, O10).18

Admittedly, the motifs of lived belief were popular not merely for their religious potency, as Wilhelm Oel-schig’s charming etching of 1841, Going to Church, demon-strates (fig. C3). Replicating a composition by Eduard Bendemann, the etching creates a scene of enchanting piety, but it also caters to the contemporary taste for idyllic landscapes, folklore, and traditional costume, so that the

approaching the divine, conceiving it as a substitute for religion altogether. Accordingly, Albrecht Dürer and Raphael kneel before the throne of art, not of religion, in Franz Pforr’s early vision of his revered predecessors, drawn around 1808 or 1810 and widely circulated in its 1832 incarnation as an etching by Carl Hoff.14 Granted a life of its own, the individual art object became the locus of epiphanic experience. The result was a theology of pres-ence and an ideology of autonomy,15 two concepts that have continued to shape modernist attitudes toward art to the present day. In the decades around 1800 they gave rise to the cult of the artist as visionary, seer, and even saint-like figure. The maker of the Sistine Madonna was henceforth venerated as the “divine” Raphael. Even those

Fig. c2. carl Ferdinand Berthold (german, 1799–1838). Going to Church, 1832. etching; sheet (cut within platemark) 1015/16 x 1515/16 inches (27.9 x 38.1 cm). the muriel and philip Berman gift, acquired from the John s. phillips bequest of 1876 to the pennsylvania academy of the Fine arts, 1985-52-20121

Fig. c3. wilhelm oelschig (german, 1814–after 1862), after eduard Julius Friedrich Bendemann (german, 1811–1889). Going to Church, c. 1841. etching; plate 79/16 x 1011/16 inches (19.2 x 27.1 cm). the muriel and philip Berman gift, acquired from the John s. phillips bequest of 1876 to the pennsylvania academy of the Fine arts, 1985-52-14298


viewer hovers between engaged participant and distant observer. Nonetheless, the Madonna was never far, and she appears here in the upper right corner as a wayside cross, the divine child nestled into her arm. Her appear-ance in this print is no coincidence. The cult of the Sistine Madonna was but one expression of a rapidly spreading veneration of the Madonna, and the variations in paint and ink were countless (see figs. C7, C9–C11, C13, L9, N6, P1). Only the twelfth century rivaled the epoch in the breadth and intensity of its Marian devotion. Consequently, it was not only mad artists but also many a young girl who expe-rienced visitations by the Holy Virgin.

Certainly, not all Marian visions received canoni-cal approval, nor all visionaries posthumous sainthood. However, those that did had lasting influence. One need only think of Lourdes, still a popular pilgrimage site today, where in 1858 Mary appeared in a grotto to Bernadette

Soubirous, the daughter of a humble miller. Four years earlier, Pope Pius IX had pronounced the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which stipulates that Mary was conceived without original sin and was thus, from the first instant of her existence, in a state of sanctifying grace. The passion for Christ’s mother was so widespread as to infiltrate Protestant culture, so that even someone like Johann Gottfried Herder — a minister in the heartlands of the Reformation — could not resist the Madonna’s charms, although he tried to channel his fascination into poetic outlets.19 It is not surprising, then, that this great German theologian (who was a philosopher, poet, and literary critic as well) would collect, as part of his interest in folklore, a Sicilian fishermen’s folksong, “O Sanctissima,” praising the “Dulcis Virgo Maria” (Sweet Virgin Mary; see p. 000).20 In turn, Herder’s rendition would inspire in 1829 yet another Raphaelsque Madonna, this time painted by one of the

minor Dresden Romantics and sensitively translated into print just a year later (see fig. N6).

Gender politics also played an important role in the Madonna craze. Across denominational and national borders, the Virgin was celebrated as a model of ideal womanhood.21 The dreaming girl in Georg Friedrich August Lucas’s lithograph of about 1828–29 (fig. C4), picturesquely placed above the ruins of Heidelberg Castle, testifies to this fashion as much as the countless images of

loving mothers do (see figs. O13, O14), or the smash hit of the 1830s, The Church-Goer, by the Düsseldorf painter Louis Ammy Blanc.22 An instant success, Blanc’s medie-valizing portrait quickly entered the modern machinery of reproduction, as August Hoffmann’s Kunstverein print of 1835 illustrates (fig. C5). In turn, such printed matter would serve an eager audience as sought-after models for other decorative purposes, from the embellishment of coffee cups, pipe bowls, and key boxes to the adornment

Fig. c4. georg Friedrich august lucas (german, 1803–1863). Reverie, 1828. crayon lithograph; image 83/8 x 8 inches (21.3 x 20.3 cm). purchased with the lola downin peck Fund, 1998-142-1

Fig. c5. august hoffmann (german, 1810–1872), after louis ammy Blanc (german, 1810–1885). The Church-Goer, 1835. etching and engraving; plate 141/4 x 103/16 inches (36.2 x 25.9 cm). the muriel and philip Berman gift, acquired from the John s. phillips bequest of 1876 to the pennsylvania academy of the Fine arts, 1985-52-18844


of carpetbags, fire screens, and pearl-embroidered sofa cushions.

In these various evocations of the Madonna and of virtuous maidens and doting mothers, the high and the low converged. The subsequent communion of poetry and the-ology, scientific inquiry and popular culture, erudite sym-bolism and pure enjoyment of form also eroded the fault lines between aesthetic religion and religious revivalism. In principle, these two outlooks were antagonistic; in reality, cross-fertilization was common. An allegory by Overbeck, best known as Italia and Germania, exemplifies this cross-over (fig. C6).23 Today an icon of German Romantic art, its origins were humble, highly personal, and not restricted to the artistic implications of its current title.24 The project was born of the friendship of the young Overbeck, then seventeen years old and recently enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and Franz Pforr, a fellow student

one year his senior. First acquainted in 1806, the two soul mates soon formed a symbiotic working relationship. Their intimate friendship made art history only a few years later, when it became the basis for the first anti-academic secession in modern art, the foundation in 1809 of the Brotherhood of Saint Luke (the Lukasbrüder).25 Following its relocation to Rome a year later, this small band of rebels quickly attracted further members and — with the com-pletion of a fresco cycle for the Casa Bartholdy, executed in 1816–17 and dedicated to the Old Testament figure of Joseph — international acclaim. Within a decade, those associated with the youthful rebellion became known as Nazarenes and inspired a European-wide movement.26

Even before their move to Rome, Overbeck and Pforr had engaged in expansive discussions about the nature, purpose, and theory of art. In January 1808 they formed the idea of making paintings to reflect their artistic ideals.

Both artists were indebted to what they saw as a medieval ideal of simplicity and sincerity, “medieval” here encompassing much of what we would call Renaissance today. But while Pforr favored the boldness of the north: the characteristic garments, physiognomic stark-ness, irrational spaces, ornamental flatness, and angular lines of old German prints, and (in painting) the stark local coloring; Over-beck preferred the gentle idealism of the south: the perfected beauty, balanced compositions, modulated coloring, and lyrical mood of early Italian art. From their involvement a leitmotif was born: the theme of two loving sisters, one a fair-haired German maiden, the other a bru-nette Italian beauty. In the following months the two artists reworked the motif with an almost obsessive intensity, producing a bewildering profusion of drawings, prints, and paintings of the two women (fig. C7). This proliferation of images was accompanied by a complex elabora-tion of the women’s identities. At the end of the process the vision of twin artistic ideals (Italian and German Renaissance art) had expanded into a nuptial fantasy (the artists’ ideal brides)

Fig. c7. louis Josef Kramp (german, 1804–1871), after Franz pforr (german, 1788–1812). Friendship, c. 1833–34. From Compositionen und

Handzeichnungen aus dem Nachlasse von Franz Pforr, vol. 2 (Frankfurt am main, 1834). lithograph, printed with tone stone; stone 131/2 x 103/4 inches (34.3 x 27.3 cm). purchased with funds contributed by John w. ittmann, 2009-100-1(2)

Fig. c6. Ferdinand piloty (german, 1786–1844), after Johann Friedrich overbeck (german, 1789–1869). Germany and Italy, c. 1837–42. litho-graph; stone 223/16 x 211/4 inches (56.3 x 54 cm). the muriel and phil-ip Berman gift, acquired from the John s. phillips bequest of 1876 to the pennsylvania academy of the Fine arts, 1985-52-39710


and acquired a biblical framework (Sulamith, the bride of Solomon in the Old Testament Song of Songs, and Maria, her New Testament antitype). This last, profoundly theo-logical enrichment constituted an urgent call for conver-sion to Christianity that made manifest a core objective of the Nazarene program: to spread God’s word and prose-lytize all those removed from His grace, be they heathens, atheists, lapsed Christians, or, above all, Jews. Thus Over-beck’s Sulamith — and not her fair-haired sister — bears the features and attributes of the Madonna, a powerful visual allusion suggesting the impending transformation of the Old Testament type into her New Testament antitype.

The motif ’s rich iconography and intimate personal history became buried, however, when Overbeck aban-doned his canvas after Pforr’s premature death in 1812. Sixteen years later, when the painter returned to the com-position in 1828, its personal and biblical allusions yielded to a more obvious reading of the two female figures as embodiments of the artistic styles of the south and north.27 As Italia and Germania, the image acquired instant fame, and reproductive prints such as Ferdinand Piloty’s litho-graph for the 1842 portfolio of the Royal Bavarian Pina-kothek in Munich and the picture gallery of Schleissheim Palace ensured their wide dissemination (see fig. C5).28 Subsequently, the motif enjoyed a rich history of trans-mutations, including in Eduard Julius Friedrich Bende-mann’s enigmatic Two Girls at the Well (fig. C8).

Overbeck and Pforr’s project of Sulamith and Maria deservedly occupies a prominent place in any account of German Romantic art, not least because of its emphatically integrative nature. In its fusion of different genres — from personal account and personification allegory to biblical history — it represents a potent example of the dissolution of the hierarchy of genres that would become a hallmark of nineteenth- century art and ultimately elevate even the most trivial objects as worthy subject matter (Édouard Manet’s Asparagus of 1880, now in the Musée d’Orsay, is but one example). The project also embodied the reform-minded mood of a new generation of artists who, con-demning the eclectic styles of their teachers as decadent and frivolous, turned toward the medieval masters for moral as much as artistic reasons. For the Romantics, the

Middle Ages (along with the early decades of the Renais-sance) stood for more than a specific style or idiom; they incarnated a whole set of ethical values, such as purity, honesty, and childlike naïveté, as well as a way of life that was God-fearing and blessed by community and non- alienated work. Not least, this dream of a rooted existence drew Romantic artists, like so many of the urban buyers of their work, to wistful fantasies of tranquil country life untouched by the taint of capitalism and rapid industrial-ization (see figs. J7, V11).

The Romantic vision of a transalpine union also played an integral part in cultural self-discovery and the formation of national identity (see pp. 000–000). The pair-ing of Italia and Germania reflected a fervent desire on the part of the Germans to claim cultural parity with the Ital-ians. In the face of the burdensome Italian artistic heritage celebrated with such unrestrained bias by the “father of art history,” the Renaissance painter, architect, and writer Giorgio Vasari, the Romantics promoted a rediscovered world of medieval Germanic culture.29 In the arts, from this point on, the Nibelungen heroes of German legend fought side by side with the crusaders of Ludovico Ari-osto’s Orlando Furioso or Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberate. Dürer held hands with Raphael; Shakespeare stood with Dante; and Ossian sat at the side of Homer (see fig. N5).30 Accordingly, Ferdinand Olivier paired a Ger-man sculptor (his identity has been a mystery, but of the suggested names, Peter Vischer and Tilman Riemenschnei-der among them, the young Adam Kraft seems the most likely; see pp. 000, 000) with Raphael, and the architect of the Strasbourg cathedral, Erwin von Steinbach, with Dante (see fig. J8). And when Philipp Veit imagined Christianity Introducing the Fine Arts into Germany in 1836 (fig. C9), he placed Italia and Germania as equal sisters to the left and right of the central panel.31 There they sat in noble monumentality, as the outer wings of the colossal triptych, bowing their heads in humble devotion before the allegory of religion, whose sweet grandeur recalls once again the commanding yet comforting presence of the Holy Virgin.

Contemporary print culture was vital to these var-ious processes of adaptation. Prints also accelerated the profound changes in taste that occurred between 1750 and

Fig. c8. georg Jacob Felsing (german, 1802–1883), after eduard Julius Friedrich Bendemann (german, 1811–1889). Two Girls at the Well, 1834–35. etching; plate 147/8 x 191/8 inches (37.8 x 48.6 cm). the muriel and philip Berman gift, acquired from the John s. phillips bequest of 1876 to the pennsylvania academy of the Fine arts, 1985-52-19678


1850. On the one hand, they introduced a broad audience to the northern Gothic tradition previously considered crude but now honored for its authenticity, meticulous realism, and spiritual depth. A landmark in this realm was the print portfolio of lithographic reproductions of the groundbreaking collection of northern medieval paintings amassed by the brothers Sulpiz and Melchior Boisserée and Johann Bertram in the aftermath of the widespread secularization of ecclesiastical properties at the beginning of the nineteenth century (see fig. P5). Published between 1821 and 1840, the lithographs by Johann Nepomuk Strix-ner reproducing these paintings enchanted viewers with

their velvety shadows and golden highlights, as well as with their careful editing, which stressed the devotional aspect of the originals. On the other hand, the new print albums also altered the taste of the age with respect to established artists, shifting the focus, for example, from Raphael’s dramatic history paintings and famous fresco cycles to his early work, and in particular his sweet portrayals of the Madonna (fig. C10). Reproductive engravings and litho-graphs provided the models for contemporary artists to update their own visions of the Christian saints, and simul-taneously fed the results back into the stream of repro-duced images.

The reception of Joseph Caspar’s delicate engrav-ing of a painted Saint Catherine — a work then attributed to the young Raphael — exemplifies this cycle (fig. C11).32 Published in 1825, it was the first print the Swiss engraver executed in Milan under the supervision of the famous Italian printmaker Giuseppe Longhi. A decade later, when the painting was still considered an early work of Raphael’s, it inspired a canvas by the Düssel-dorf artist Ernst Deger, a Nazarene follower, whose Mary Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child transformed the pious figure of the kneeling saint into the Virgin herself.33 This small devo-tional picture was such a success that Deger immediately painted a replica, which was, as the influential art journal Kunst-Blatt noted in 1836, “the favorite of everybody who visited the exhibi-tion [at the Berlin academy].”34 As was to be expected, its popularity called for a reproductive print, and it was none other than Joseph Caspar who was entrusted with the task (fig. C12). With his usual deft combination of etch-ing and engraving, Caspar sensitively captured the particular character of Deger’s Raphaelesque version: a combi-nation of sweet sentimentality, ethereal beauty, and childlike innocence, evok-ing a gentle Renaissance never-never land as a refuge from the harsher reali-ties of the modern world.

It is worth noting that the repro-duction by Caspar is approximately

the same size as Deger’s domestically scaled Andachtsbild (devotional picture), a choice that points to the import-ant function of reproductive prints as suitable surrogates for cherished originals in the furnishing of a bourgeois parlor, or in this case bedroom. As a new clientele began to demand high art at affordable prices, prints became a sought-after medium that united decoration and devotion.

Fig. c9. eugen eduard schäffer (german, 1802–1871), after philipp Veit (german, 1793–1877); decorative border after edward Jakob von steinle (austrian, 1810–1886). Christianity Introducing the Fine Arts into Germany, c. 1838–40. engraving and etching, with border printed in brown ink; plate 163/8 x 263/4 inches (41.6 x 67.9 cm). purchased with the leo model Foundation curatorial discretionary Fund, 2008-240-1

Fig. c10. carl Joseph alois agricola (german, 1779–1852), after raphael (italian, 1483–1520). The Madonna of the Meadow, 1812. etching and engraving; plate 165/16 x 123/16 inches (41.5 x 31 cm). the muriel and philip Berman gift, acquired from the John s. phillips bequest of 1876 to the pennsylvania academy of the Fine arts, 1985-52-18584


Artists were well aware of this twofold aspect of the medium. Philipp Otto Runge thus conceived of his intri-cate etching cycle of 1805, the Tageszeiten (Times of Day; see figs. I5–I8), as a kind of “flypaper, with which I — but in all honesty — wish to trap [people], so that they first believe it to be mere room decoration but afterward cannot tear themselves away from it.”35

In art, as in religion, Romanticism encouraged a sense of quiet yet deep and heartfelt contemplation, a prac-tice of silent worship that opened up that mysterious path inward that Novalis, the poet of the elusive blue flower, had so famously evoked in his quest for the eternal within him-self.36 Again and again, we are reminded that these prints called for a kind of prolonged contemplation — a patient and repeated poring-over of each and every detail — that defies our contemporary habits of rapid viewing. They also called for conversation. The Romantics firmly believed in art’s communal function and consequently couched the experience of art — whether in prose, paint, or print — not in solitary but in collective terms. In their art we often encounter in the background of familiar scenes small fig-ures who are deeply engrossed in conversation, like those in Overbeck’s 1825 painting Mary and Elisabeth with the Infants Jesus and John (Neue Pinakothek, Munich), whose identity and discourse remain enigmatic, reminding us of the constant oscillation between aesthetic delight and pious exploration afforded to viewers.37 In Georg Jacob Felsing’s engraving of the painting, these background fig-ures are omitted, perhaps for reasons of size, or perhaps

because their removal made for a simpler devotional image without any mysterious riddles (figs. C13, C14). Yet what-ever the inclination of the individual viewer, the painting on the wall, like the print album on the parlor table, was a communal affair.

Deger’s and Overbeck’s compositions exemplify a hallmark of the nineteenth-century Raphael craze that, in addition to inspiring painted or engraved copies, fostered above all a practice of reworking (rather than imitating) the earlier models, and thus resulted in a broad range of stylistic variations. Many of these works still betray the desire to marry Germania and Italia — Dürer’s hard-edged realism and pronounced, domineering contour and Raphael’s gentle idealism and harmonious fusion of line and color. The forceful emphasis on clearly defined shapes in Overbeck’s painting made it ideal for reproduction, and we do not miss color in Piloty’s lithograph (see fig. C5), not least because his crumbling mark bestows a softness on the composition that eases the austerity of the original’s outlines while playing up its atmospheric quality. Deger shared Overbeck’s linear thinking, yet his work lacks the almost abstract sensibility of the Nazarene’s later work. Instead, the crispness of Deger’s composition, so delicately captured by Caspar (see fig. C9), has a tender sweetness that reflects the artist’s penchant for the purity of the early Raphael and his immediate predecessors.

A third variant of the subject that enjoyed great pop-ularity, a painting by Eduard Steinbrück, reflects the infu-sion of the Nazarenes’ idealism and enamel-like surfaces with a succinct measure of natural observation. Wilhelm Schadow, a former member of the Brotherhood of Saint Luke, made this “naturalist idealism” (naturalistischer Idealismus) the foundational principle of the Düsseldorf school of painting, which from the 1830s onward attracted students from Norway, Russia, and the United States, including such later luminaries as Emanuel Leutze, East-man Johnson, and George Caleb Bingham, to name a few.38 Steinbrück’s charming Madonna in the Workshop Door, painted in 1831–32 and engraved with great finesse by Eduard Eichens between 1833 and 1835 (fig. C15), embodies the principles of this Düsseldorf style, with even the wood shavings on the workshop floor lovingly delineated.39

In contrast to her Sistine sister, Steinbrück’s Madonna literally steps into the world of the viewer, and the careful rendering of the plants and trailing vines, the masonry, and the heavily grained oak door, with its chunky hand-forged nails and up-to-date ironwork, evoke a contemporary setting, perhaps a nearby Rhenish vine-yard. When compared with Overbeck’s flattened shapes or the ethereal forms of Deger’s composition, the greater modeling of Steinbrück’s Madonna lends her weight and material substance, and her stylish hairdo adds a touch of 1830s fashion to her newly gained corporeality. While each detail still invites an allegorical reading — the nails and the grape-laden vine alluding, for example, to Christ’s crucifix-ion and the Eucharist — this kind of “disguised symbolism,” as Erwin Panofsky once called it in the context of early Netherlandish painting,40 is finely balanced by the “thing-ness” of the objects, and by the artist’s pleasure in surface description. The otherworldliness of Raphael’s Sistine Madonna has yielded to an everyday apparition in the here and now. We might read in this transformation a gesture toward a very different Madonna, that is, the Virgin in a sixteenth- century painting that was then still attributed to Hans Holbein the Younger (see fig. P1).41 “The divine Mother does not appear among the clouds, . . . but she treads earthly soil,” a critic gushed of this painting in 1865. “No longer as a vision, but bodily and actually is she repre-sented.”42 And so was Steinbrück’s Virgin.

The modern allusions in Steinbrück’s Madonna were not accidental. Pious women were revered in the Roman-tic era as bastions of Christian ritual in a period of secu-larization, and depictions of them on their way to church proliferated in the market (we have already encountered examples in Blanc’s scene above the Cologne cathedral and Olivier’s Sunday; see figs. C4, J1). Feminists have justly criticized this idealized model of saintly womanhood for its anti-emancipatory potential.43 Yet both the Raphael cult and the Madonna ideal it fostered could also have the opposite effect, one of unexpected liberation, as demon-strated by two artists from very different backgrounds who were united by their outsider status: Maria Ellenrieder, one of very few successful women artists of the time, and Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, “Painter of the Rothschilds and

Fig. c11. Joseph caspar (swiss, 1799–1880), supervised by giuseppe longhi (italian, 1766–1831), after a painting formerly attributed to raphael (italian, 1483–1520) or to Fra Bartolomeo (italian, 1472–1517). Saint Catherine of Alexandria, 1825. etching and engraving; plate 121/4 x 75/8 inches (31.1 x 19.3 cm). the muriel and philip Berman gift, acquired from the John s. phillips bequest of 1876 to the pennsylvania academy of the Fine arts, 1985-52-18605

Fig. c12. Joseph caspar (swiss, 1799–1880), after ernst deger (ger-man, 1809–1885). The Virgin Mary Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child, 1838. etching and engraving; plate 159/16 x 141/16 inches (39.6 x 35.7 cm). the muriel and philip Berman gift, acquired from the John s. phillips bequest of 1876 to the pennsylvania academy of the Fine arts, 1985-52-18541


the Rothschild of Painters,” who was in many ways the first modern Jewish artist.44

Moritz Oppenheim is perhaps best known today for his depictions of nineteenth-century Jewish life.45 However, he pursued another aspect of contemporary art with equal talent and acumen, painting biblical history in a Nazarene idiom that challenged, both thematically and stylistically, the proselytizing tendencies of the Brotherhood of Saint Luke and its circle. Both sides of his work came together in a canvas of 1835, Noah’s Ark, which was immediately acquired by the heir to the Russian throne, the future Alexander II, and engraved in 1841–42 as the annual mem-bership print of the Albrecht-Dürer-Verein in Nuremberg (fig. C16; see p. 000).46 Once again, the print approximates the dimensions of the original, making it a suitable substi-tute for the actual canvas. In both painting and print the Raphaelesque qualities of the draughtsmanship, clothing

style, and, to some degree, composition recall the Naz-arene phase of Oppenheim’s Italian years between 1821 and 1824. Yet the scene’s anecdotal aspect and emphasis on family intimacy make it a quintessential Biedermeier genre subject, cozy and convivial, as does the decidedly contemporary feel of the faces, especially in the case of the dark-haired maiden in the background, who peeks out mischievously, and the young boy leaning on the window ledge, who fixes our attention with his direct, confident gaze. The company’s merry mood lifts the terror of the flood, and so the ark’s lonely voyage morphs into an innoc-uous adventure akin to a leisurely Sunday boat ride on the Rhine.

If Oppenheim succeeded in preserving his Jewishness while appealing to a non-Jewish audience, Maria Ellen-rieder defied gender stereotypes without transgressing the era’s strict boundaries of feminine propriety. As the first

Fig. c13. georg Jacob Felsing (german, 1802–1883), after Johann Friedrich overbeck (german, 1789–1869). The Virgin Mary and Her Mother Elisabeth with the Infants Jesus and Saint John, 1835–39. etching and engrav-ing; plate 221/2 x 161/8 inches (57.1 x 41 cm). the muriel and philip Berman gift, acquired from the John s. phillips bequest of 1876 to the pennsylvania academy of the Fine arts, 1985-52-19670

Fig. c14. georg Jacob Felsing, after Johann Friedrich overbeck. The Virgin Mary and Her Mother Elisabeth with the Infants Jesus and Saint John, 1835–39. etching and engraving (trial proof); sheet (cut within platemark) 223/8 x 161/8 inches (56.8 x 41 cm). the muriel and philip Berman gift, acquired from the John s. phillips bequest of 1876 to the pennsylvania academy of the Fine arts, 1985-52-19669


of her sex to be enrolled at the new Academy of Fine Arts in Munich (the Akademie der Bildenden Künste), which she joined in 1813, she attained the high academic rank of a bona fide history painter, a feat rarely achieved by any of her female peers in the long history of Western art.47 A devout Catholic and dedicated churchgoer, Ellenrieder fashioned her identity, both as a woman and as a painter, on the model of the Madonna, whom the artist imagined — posing her as the poetess of the Magnificat — as an arche-type of female creativity.48

Once again, the Sistine Madonna occupied center stage in these efforts. In 1825, while in Rome, Ellenrieder painted an innovative variation of the famous motif, which quickly established her international reputation.49 The composition’s curtain and columns recall the theatrical setting of Raphael’s invention (see fig. C1), but the unusual

motif of Mary holding her toddler’s hand as they descend a broad staircase brought the scene into the experiential world of the contemporary viewer. Ignaz Heinrich von Wessenberg, a high-ranking church official in the diocese of Ellenrieder’s hometown of Constance, heaped praise on his young protégée:

In this exemplary picture, the ideal majesty and beauty of the

Raphaelesque is felicitously blended with the pious simplic-

ity and grace of the early Florentine style. . . . The pictorial

idea is new and beautiful. Who would criticize her? She is,

rather, worthy of admiration. Or why should the Madonna

always only be depicted with the boy on her lap or carried in

her arms? Here the Christ Child appears more awe-inspiring,

authoritative, divine. The setting is of the utmost simplicity.

Thus the viewer’s attention is not distracted by anything.50

The life-size canvas soon became the subject of numerous reproductions, of which the most touching is surely the original etching by the artist herself, executed shortly after the triumphal premiere of her canvas at an exhibition in Karlsruhe in 1826 (fig. C17). The irregular hatching and ethereal lightness of the central figures in the print bring out the image’s naive immediacy and heartfelt nature, qual-ities much cherished by the Romantic generation.

Fig. c15. eduard eichens (german, 1804–1877), after eduard steinbrück (german, 1802–1882). Madonna in the Workshop Door, 1835. membership print of the Verein der Kunstfreunde im preussischen staate in Berlin for 1834. etching; sheet (cut within platemark) 133/8 x 105/8 inches (34 x 27 cm). the muriel and philip Berman gift, acquired from the John s. phillips bequest of 1876 to the pennsylvania academy of the Fine arts, 1985-52-18643

Fig. c16. Friedrich wagner (german, 1803–1876), after moritz dan-iel oppenheim (german, 1800–1882). Noah and His Family in the Ark, 1840–41. etching and engraving (steel engraving); plate 147/8 x 163/4 inches (37.8 x 42.6 cm). the muriel and philip Berman gift, acquired from the John s. phillips bequest of 1876 to the pennsylvania academy of the Fine arts, 1985-52-19931

Fig. c17. maria ellenrieder (german, 1791–1863). Mary Holding the Hand of the Boy Jesus, 1826. etching and drypoint; plate 615/16 x 45/8 inches (17.7 x 11.8 cm). the muriel and philip Berman gift, acquired from the John s. phillips bequest of 1876 to the pennsylvania academy of the Fine arts, 1985-52-13236


Although the Raphael cult has withered since its zenith in the 1800s, the Sistine Madonna is still with us. Its adorable little angels are ubiquitous in reproductions ranging from high art to pure kitsch (fig. C18).51 The path to this new visual world of widely disseminated images was largely paved by the print revolution that took place in Europe around the turn of the nineteenth century. Images had circulated in and as prints before, but with the onset of the Romantic era the process of the multiplication and consumption of the printed image attained a new level.52 The stardom of Raphael and his Sistine Madonna was one of its effects.

notes1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, letter to Heinrich von Heß, August 11, 1813, quoted in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Tagebücher; Historisch- kritische Ausgabe, vol. 5, part 2, 1813–1816, Kommentar, ed. Wolfgang Albrecht (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2007), p. 579: “Sehen Sie hier mit den größten Meisterzügen der Welt Kind und Gott und Mutter und Jungfrau zugleich in göttlicher Verklärung dargestellt. Das Bild allein ist eine Welt, eine ganze volle Künstlerwelt und müßte seinen Schöpfer, hätte er auch nichts als dies gemalt, allein unsterblich machen!” I thank Russell Stockton for his help with the English translations.

2. See Andreas Henning, ed., Die Sixtinische Madonna: Raffaels Kultbild wird 500, exh. cat. (Munich: Prestel, 2012), p. 39. The painting is in the Staatliche Kunstsammlung Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister.

3. Quoted in Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Reflections on the Paint-ing and Sculpture of the Greeks, with Instructions for the Connoisseur, and an Essay on Grace in Works of Art, trans. Henry Fusseli [Fuseli] (London: Printed for the translator, and sold by A. Millar, 1765), pp. 38–39; for the German, see Winckelmann, Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in die Malerei und Bild-hauerkunst (Dresden and Leipzig: Waltherische Handlung, 1756), pp. 26–27: “Sehet die Madonna mit einem Gesichte voll Unschuld und zugleich einer mehr als weiblichen Grösse, in einer seelig ruhigen Stellung, in derjenigen Stille, welche die Alten in den Bildern ihrer Gottheiten herrschen liessen. Wie groβ und edel ist ihr ganzer Contour! Das Kind auf ihren Armen ist ein Kind über gemeine Kinder erhaben, durch ein Gesichte, aus welchem ein Strahl der Gottheit durch die Unschuld der Kindheit hervorzuleuchten scheinet. . . . Die Zeit hat allerdings vieles von dem scheinbaren Glanze dieses Gemäldes geraubet, . . . allein die Seele, welche der Schöpfer dem Werke seiner Hände eingeblasen, belebet es noch itzo.”

4. See Joseph Leo Koerner, Caspar David Friedrich and the Sub-ject of Landscape (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), esp. pp. 51–53 and chap. 7, “Symbol and Allegory,” pp. 122–42. It is important to note Runge’s expanded understanding of “landscape”

here, for few modern viewers would categorize the Sistine Madonna as an embodiment of such. For Runge, “landscape” does not denote, as in common usage, the depiction of nature in its various manifestations, but a metaart that brings together the different arts and replaces the division of painting into specific types — such as history, genre, portrait, still life, etc. — with a holistic approach, dreaming of a fusion in which all come together and yet retain their individual character. Friedrich Schlegel and the Nazarenes pursued a similar concept, yet with history painting as their guiding category.

5. Alfred Rethel, quoted in Raphaels Sixtinische Madonna: Zeugnisse aus zwei Jahrhunderten deutschen Geisteslebens, ed. Michael Ladwein (Stuttgart: Urachhaus, 1993), p. 76: “Ich bin wie trunken.” See also Fritz Wefelmeyer, “Raphael’s Sistine Madonna: An Icon of the German Imagination from Herder to Heidegger,” in Text into Image, Image into Text: Proceedings of the Interdisciplinary Bicentenary Con-ference held at St. Patrick’s College Maynooth, ed. Jeff Morrison and Florian Krobb, Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, vol. 20 (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1997), pp. 105–18.

6. See Bénédicte Savoy, ed., Tempel der Kunst: Die Geburt des öffent-lichen Museums in Deutschland, 1701–1815 (Mainz: von Zabern, 2006).

7. August Wintterlin, “Müller, Johannes Friedrich Wilhelm,” in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, vol. 22, Mirus–v. Münchhausen (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1885), pp. 617–20; see the current online edition, edited by Franz Xaver von Wegele and Rochus von Liliencron, accessed January 2013, http://www.deutschebiographie.de/pnd117592641.html?anchor=adb.

8. According to at least one account, Müller had jumped out a window, apparently thinking he could fly, or that he would be saved by heavenly intervention. See Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, vol. 22 (1885), pp. 617–20.

9. Berthold Pfeiffer, “Die Kupferstecher Johann Gotthard Müller und Friedrich Müller,” Württembergische Vierteljahrshefte für Landesge-schichte (Stuttgart), vol. 4 (1881), pp. 257–81, esp. p. 277.

10. See Goethe, “Kupferstiche,” in Ueber Kunst und Alterthum in den Rhein und Mayn Gegenden, vol. 1, no. 2, Aus verschiedenen Fächern Bemerkenswerthes (Stuttgart: Cottaischen Buchhandlung, 1817), pp. 165–66; Honoré de Balzac, La comédie humaine, vol. 10, part 1, Études de Moeurs, book 3, Scènes de la vie parisienne (Paris: Furne, 1844), vol. 2, p. 246; Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., Dresden, May 15–17, 1859, in Letters of Henry Adams (1858–1891), ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930, p. 40.

11. Pfeiffer, “Die Kupferstecher Johann Gotthard Müller und Friedrich Müller,” p. 277. A restoration of Raphael’s Sistine Madonna in

1827 uncovered a curtain rod at the picture’s upper edge, still missing in Müller’s print but included in subsequent reproductions.

12. Stendhal, Vie de Henry Brulard, ed. Victor Del Litto (Grenoble: Glénat, 1988), p. 363: “C’est là le danger d’acheter des gravures des beaux tableaux que l’on voit dans ses voyages. Bientôt la gravure forme tout le souvenir, et détruit le souvenir réel. C’est ce qui m’est arrivé pour la madone de San Sisto de Dresde. La belle gravure de Müller l’a détruite pour moi.” For the English translation, see Stendhal, The Life of Henry Brulard, trans. John Sturrock (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), p. 453.

13. For an indepth discussion of Kunstreligion (aesthetic religion) versus religiöse Kunst (religious art) in the Nazarene context, see Cordula Grewe, “Religious Revival and the Question of Modernity in NineteenthCentury Art,” in A Companion to Nineteenth- Century Art, ed. Michelle Facos (Malden, MA: WileyBlackwell, forthcoming).

14. For an illustration of Hoff’s lithograph and a discussion of Pforr’s drawing (now lost), see Unter Glas und Rahmen: Druckgraphik der Romantik aus den Beständen des Landesmuseums Mainz und aus Privatbesitz, exh. cat. (Mainz: Landesmuseum, 1993), pp. 156–57, cat. 64.

15. See Randall K. Van Schepen, “From the Form of Spirit to the Spirit of Form,” in Re-Enchantment, ed. James Elkins and David Morgan (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 47–68; Cordula Grewe, The Nazarenes: Romantic Avant-Garde and the Art of the Concept (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2015), pp. 87–89.

16. See August Wilhelm Schlegel, “Der Bund der Kirche mit den Künsten (1800),” in August Wilhelm von Schlegel’s sämmtliche Werke, vol. 1, Poetische Werke, ed. Eduard Böcking (Leipzig: Weidmann’sche Buchhandlung, 1846–47), part 1, pp. 87–96; Elisabeth Schröter, “RaffaelKult und RaffaelForschung: Johann David Passavant und seine RaffaelMonographie im Kontext der Kunst und Kunstgeschichte seiner Zeit,” Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana, vol. 26 (1990), pp. 303–97, esp. pp. 312–24.

17. Mitchell Benjamin Frank, German Romantic Painting Redefined: Nazarene Tradition and the Narratives of Romanticism (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001), p. 91, fig. 43. Traditionally dated around 1810, Michael Thimann has convincingly argued for a later date, namely 1817; for the profound implications of this new attribution and a substantial rereading of the image’s iconography, see Thimann, Fried-rich Overbeck und die Bildkonzepte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2014), pp. 156–61. See also Grewe, “Religious Revival” (forthcoming).

18. For the pictorial strategies and the cycle’s conceptualization as a reflection and practice of Christian ritual, see Cordula Grewe,

Fig. c18. Unknown artist, after raphael (italian, 1483–1520). The Little Cherubs, c. 1872–74. lithograph published by currier & ives, new York; image 91/16 x 111/16 inches (23 x 28.1 cm). gift of mrs. Francis p. garvan, 1977-297-183


The Nazarenes: Romantic Avant-garde and the Art of the Concept (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015).

19. Cordula Grewe, “Sulamith and Maria: Erotic Mariology and the Cult of Friendship,” chap. 2 in Painting the Sacred in the Age of Romanticism (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 61–98, esp. pp. 87–88.

20.

21. For a reflection of this trend in art, see, for example, the discussion of Abbott Handerson Thayer’s portraiture in Kristin Schwain, Signs of Grace: Religion and American Art in the Gilded Age (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), chap. 4, pp. 104–32; also see my review of this book in Religion and the Arts, vol. 16, no. 4 (2012), pp. 403–8.

22. Blanc painted several replicas; the first, original version is today located in the Landesmuseum of my hometown, Hanover, Germany. See Cordula Grewe, “Naturalist Idealism,” chap. 14 in The Nazarenes: Romantic Avant-Garde and the Art of the Concept (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2015), pp. 237–49.

23. For inexplicable reasons, the caption in the Piloty print reverses the title and thus the identification of the allegorical figures.

24. See Grewe, Painting the Sacred in the Age of Romanticism, p. 332 n. 15.

25. For the symbol of the Brotherhood of Saint Luke, the Lukasbund, see Frank, German Romantic Painting Redefined, p. 12, fig. 1.

26. Grewe, Painting the Sacred in the Age of Romanticism, pp. 19–21, and Grewe, review of Signs of Grace, in Religion and the Arts, vol. 16, no. 4 (2012), pp. 403–8.

27. Margaret Howitt, Friedrich Overbeck: Sein Leben und Schaffen, vol. 1, 1789–1833 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1886), pp. 478–79. For a recent and innovative interpretation of the Overbeck’s invention and the changes in the motif ’s meaning, see Thimann, Friedrich Overbeck, pp. 161–76.

28. See Königl. Bayer. Pinakothek zu München und Gemälde-Gallerie zu Schleissheim . . . in lithographirten Abbildungen (Munich: Piloty & Loehle, [1842]).

29. See Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori: nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi (Florence: Sansoni, 1966–87), vol. 6; Vasari’s Vite was first published in Florence in 1550.

30. The Nibelungenlied (Song of the Nibelungs) is a Middle High German epic poem written about 1200, which evokes a precourtly heroic world. Its hero, Siegfried, arouses envy and suspicion by marrying Kriemhild, sister of King Gunther of the Burgundians. Her

family, led by the dark assassin Hagen, murders him treacherously and steals the fabulous Nibelung treasure. Years later she remarries, lures her family to visit, and exacts her revenge in a disastrous battle that leaves thousands on both sides dead, including all the protagonists. Rediscovered in the nineteenth century, its most famous adaptation is undoubtedly Richard Wagner’s opera cycle.

31. Removed from the wall and today a threepiece triptych, the fresco is still housed in the Städel Museum, Frankfurt; see Norbert Suhr, Philipp Veit (1793–1877): Leben und Werk eines Nazareners; Monographie und Werkverzeichnis (Weinheim: VCH, 1991), pp. 245–47, col. pl. 8 on p. 408.

32. Johann David Passavant made it clear in 1839 that this was an image painted on the inside of one of two outer wings (Flügelthüren) of a small Madonna and Child triptych; the other wing had a painting of Saint Barbara, and the outsides of the two wings carried an Annunciation scene painted in grisaille. Passavant reattributed the triptych to Fra Bartolommeo di S. Marco. See Johann David Passavant, Rafael von Urbino und sein Vater Giovanni Santi (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1839), vol. 2, pp. 407–8.

33. Deger’s original version of 1835 is today housed in the Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf; the replica of 1836 is in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Nationalgalerie. For an illustration, see Ekkehard Mai, “Deger, Ernst” in Lexikon der Düssel-dorfer Malerschule, 1819–1918 (Munich: Bruckmann, 1997), vol. 1, 265–68, col. pl. 303 on p. 267.

34. “Düsseldorfer Kunstbericht,” Kunst-Blatt (Stuttgart and Tübingen), vol. 17, no. 80 (October 6, 1836), p. 330: “. . . der Liebling Aller, welche die Ausstellung besuchten,”

35. Philipp Otto Runge to his father, February 13, 1803, in Hinter-lassene Schriften (Hamburg: Friedrich Perthes, 1840), part 2, pp. 200–201: “. . . Leimruthen, womit ich sie — aber in aller Ehrlichkeit — fangen will, daß sie nur erst glauben, es wären bloß die Zimmerverzierungen, hernach aber davon nicht wieder loskommen können.” Leimrute (the modern form of the noun) translates as “lime twig,” or birdlime applied to a twig in order to snare small birds; the English flypaper seemed to capture best the sense of the German in this context. See also Anette Haas, “Von einem der ‘Leimruthen’ auslegt — ‘aber in aller Ehrlichkeit’: Über einen Aspekt der Zeiten Philipp Otto Runges,” in Zwischen Askese und Sinnlichkeit: Festschrift für Norbert Werner zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Norbert Werner, Carolin Bahr, and Gora Jain (Dettelbach: J. H. Röll, 1997), pp. 126–40, quotation on p. 126.

36. “We dream of a journey through the universe. But is the universe then not in us? We do not know the depths of our spirit. Inward goes the secret path.” Novalis, Pollen (fragment 16), in Frederick C.

Beiser. The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 11.

37. The painting belongs to the outstanding collection of Overbeck paintings amassed by Ludwig I of Bavaria, and today in Munich’s Neue Pinakothek; see Andreas Blühm and Gerhard Gerkens, eds., Johann Friedrich Overbeck, 1789–1869: Zur zweihundertsten Wie-derkehr seines Geburtstages, exh. cat. (Lübeck: Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte der Hansestadt Lübeck, 1989), pp. 138–39, cat. 25, col. pl. on p. 139; for an online image, see http://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Friedrich_Overbeck_009.jpg.

38. Cordula Grewe, “Nazarene or Not? On the Religious Dimension in the Düsseldorf School of Painting,” in The Düsseldorf School of Painting and Its International Influence, 1819–1918, ed. Bettina Baumgärtel, exh. cat. (Düsseldorf: Sammlung der Kunstakademie; Petersberg: Michael Imhof, 2011), pp. 86–97.

39. Ralf Mennekes, “Steinbrück, Eduard Carl (Karl),” in Lexikon der Düsseldorfer Malerschule, 1819–1918 (Munich: Bruckmann, 1997), vol. 3, pp. 319–21, pl. 431.

40. Erwin Panofsky, “Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait,” Burlington Magazine, vol. 64, no. 372 (March 1934), pp. 117–27, esp. p. 126, and Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953), vol. 1, esp. chap. 5, “Reality and Symbol in Early Flemish Painting: ‘Spiritualia sub metaphoris corporalium,’” pp. 131–48.

41. See Bodo Brinkmann, Der Bürgermeister, sein Maler und seine Familie: Hans Holbeins Madonna im Städel, exh. cat. (Petersberg: Imhof, 2004).

42. Quoted in Alfred Woltmann, Holbein and His Time, trans. F. E. Bunnètt (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1872), p. 157. For the German, see Woltmann, “Holbeins Madonna und ihre Deutungen,” Recensionen und Mittheilungen über bildende Kunst, vol. 4, no. 26 (1865), pp. 201–4, quotation on p. 203: “Nicht über den Wolken erscheint hier die göttliche Mutter, … sondern auf dem Boden dieser Erde. . . . Nicht mehr als Erscheinung, sondern leibhaft und wirklich ist sie da.” The painting, now attributed to Bartholomäus Sarburgh, is in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden.

43. HildegardWesthoffKrummacher, Als die Frauen noch sanft und engelsgleich waren: Die Sicht der Frau in der Zeit der Aufklä-rung und des Biedermeier, exh. cat. (Münster: Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Landschaftsverband WestfalenLippe, 1995).

44. Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, Erinnerungen, ed. Alfred Oppenheim (Frankfurt am Main: Frankfurter VerlagsAnstalt, 1924), p. 75; cited in Russell A. Berman, “Citizenship, Conversion, and Representation:

Moritz Oppenheim’s Return of the Volunteer,” in Cultural Studies of Modern Germany: History, Representation, and Nationhood (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), pp. 46–72, quotation on p. 53.

45. Georg Heuberger and Anton Merk, eds., Moritz Daniel Oppen-heim: Die Entdeckung des jüdischen Selbstbewesstsseins in der Kunst / Jewish Identity in 19th-Century Art, exh. cat. (Cologne: Wienand, 1999).

46. Today in the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, the picture exists in several replicas, among others in an American private collection; see ibid., p. 351, cats. I.41–I.45, col. pl. on p. 87.

47. Bärbel Kovalevski, Marie Ellenrieder, 1791–1863 (Berlin: Kovalevski, 2008).

48. Marie Ellenrieder, Mary Composes the Magnificat, 1833, oil on canvas, 25 1/2 x 18 3/16 inches (64.8 x 46.2 cm), Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, inv. no. 514. For an illustration, see Kovalevski, Marie Ellenrieder, p. 26, pl. 4, or http://swbexpo.bszbw.de/skk/detail.jsp?id=BBB2BC30433443E96E5A0BBEA841B439&img=1.

49. Marie Ellenrieder, Mary Holding the Hand of the Boy Jesus, 1824, oil on canvas, 73 x 47 5/8 inches (185.5 x 121 cm), Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe. For an illustration, see Kovalevski, Marie Ellenrieder, p. 27, pl. 5, or http://swbexpo.bszbw.de/skk/detail.jsp?id=F5C4295949FE8F5D6031088A02E43571&img=1.

50. Ignaz Heinrich von Wessenberg, Die christlichen Bilder: Ein Beförderungsmittel des christlichen Sinnes (Constanz: W. Wallis, 1827), vol. 1, pp. 338–40: “In diesem vortrefflichen Bilde hat sich die ideale Würde und Schönheit des raphaelischen Styls, mit der frommen Einfalt und Anmuth des altflorentinischen glücklich verschmolzen. . . . Die Idee der Darstellung ist neu und schön. Wer möchte sie tadeln? Sie ist vielmehr bewundernswerth. Oder warum sollte die Madonna immer nur, den Knaben auf dem Schooß oder den Armen tragend vorgestellt werden? Hier erscheint das Christuskind erhabner, selbstständiger, göttlicher. Das Beiwerk in dem Bilde ist von großer Einfachheit. Die Aufmerksamkeit des Beschauers wird daher durch nichts zerstreut.”

51. See Andreas Henning, “Das Leben der Engelchen,” in Die Sixtini-sche Madonna: Raffaels Kultbild wird 500, pp. 326–41.

52. See John Ittmann, “The Galeriewerk and the Reproductive Print of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” pp. 000–000 in this volume.

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