Friday, December 17, 2021

Nineteenth-Century Austrian Paintings (Secular and Sacred)

Friedrich von Amerling
Young Woman in Oriental Costume
1838
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Carl von Blaas
Translation of the Body of St Catherine of Alexandria to Sinai
1860
oil on canvas
Harvard Art Museums

Carl von Blaas
Translation of the Body of St Catherine of Alexandria to Sinai (detail)
1860
oil on canvas
Harvard Art Museums

Moritz von Schwind
Sabina von Steinbach carving the Statue of the Synagogue
1844
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

The documented historical figure, Erwin von Steinbach, participated in the building of Strasbourg's cathedral in the 13th century, though little more than that simple fact is known about him.  His supposed daughter Sabina was never heard of until the 19th century.  "Based on a (now lost) inscription on one of the sculptures on the exterior of the Strasbourg cathedral (naming a 'Savinae'), a nineteenth-century scholar attributed several famous sculptures both on the exterior and interior of the cathedral to the previously unacknowledged but extremely skillful female sculptor, Sabina von Steinbach, the daughter of Erwin.  That the sculptures in question date to a period approximately four decades before Erwin's work at the cathedral was evidently not recognized then or was seen as being not at all problematic.  The name of Sabina von Steinbach continues to occur in studies of medieval female artists."  (Leslie Ross in Artists of the Middle Ages, Greenwood Press, 2003)       

Moritz von Schwind
The Rose
1846
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller
Day of the Dead
1839
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller
Captain von Stierle-Holzmeister
ca. 1819
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller
Landscape
1830
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Heinrich von Angeli
Princess Victoria Melita of Edinburgh,
Grand Duchess of Hesse

1896
oil on canvas
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Carl von Blaas
View of the Roman Campagna with Aqueduct
ca. 1850
watercolor
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Rudolf von Alt
Salon in Apartment of Count Lanckoronski in Vienna
1881
watercolor and gouache
Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum

Rudolf von Alt
Library in Apartment of Count Lanckoronski in Vienna
1881
watercolor and gouache
Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum

Rudolf von Alt
Blue Drawing Room at Valtice Palace, Czechia
1845
watercolor
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Joseph Anton Koch
Scene in Hell from Dante's Divine Comedy (detail)
1825-28
fresco
Stanza di Dante, Casa Massimo, Rome

Joseph Anton Koch
Scene in Hell from Dante's Divine Comedy (detail)
1825-28
fresco
Stanza di Dante, Casa Massimo, Rome