Belvedere Research Journal

Editorial

Christian Huemer — 2024-12-18

Schubert Gets Busted

Scott Messing — 2024-12-18

Within a week of Schubert’s death in 1828, his friends broached the idea of a monument at his grave. Duly installed in the Viennese Währing District Cemetery, it lay three graves from that of Beethoven, in accordance with what Schubert’s brother Ferdinand interpreted as the composer’s dying wish: to be buried alongside his creative idol. The memorial’s configuration had no antecedent in Vienna. Schubert’s bust stood within a marble structure whose design evoked ancient classical forms. Further, the shape of the bust conjured its own distinctive traditions.

Its form is a herm. Originating in Athens, herms became a popular decoration for Roman villas, typically representing heroes, philosophers, and writers. The excavation and exhibition of herms in the second half of the eighteenth century inspired sculptors’ depictions of contemporary illustrious figures.

Despite their wide dissemination, however, no such busts had been incorporated into a public cemetery memorial in conservative Vienna at the time of Schubert’s death. Thus, placing his herm at his gravesite was an unprecedented choice, tapping into the symbolism that the rest of Europe was enthusiastically adopting.

Schubert scholarship has overlooked the traditions, ancient and modern, that informed the memorial’s design. This article gives an account of the monument’s sculptural and architectural antecedents, analyzes them in order to decode what meanings its planners contemplated and transmitted to individuals who visited the site, and finally offers its likely contemporary models.

At the Margins of Portraiture

Laura Feurle — 2024-12-18

This article reevaluates the conventional understanding of Viennese Modernist portraiture, arguing that its frequently debated “crisis” represents a productive revision of traditional genre theory. To support this argument, neglected contemporaneous discourses on portrait theory are examined, which oppose a psychological framework of interpretation. Theoretical writings of Georg Simmel and Julius von Schlosser are brought into a dialogue with selected works on paper by Egon Schiele, which were produced between 1910 and 1913 and are imbued with a distinctive self-reflexivity. By challenging established genre paradigms, the three contemporaries foreground the significance of the individual pictorial appearance and its potential to generate meaning. Their aesthetic approach highlights the dynamic interplay between form, subject, materiality, and meaning and offers methodological implications for future scholarly analysis.

The Portrait of Marie Kerner von Marilaun as a Bride

Markus Fellinger — 2024-12-18

This article describes the discovery of a previously unknown early work by the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. Another discovery made this attribution possible: that of unpublished letters written by Klimt to the leading Austrian botanist Anton Kerner von Marilaun, who commissioned the painting. As Klimt’s painted oeuvre of around 250 works is relatively small, finding a completely unknown and previously undocumented painting is an extremely rare occurrence. Thanks to these letters and to further identified sources, the genesis of the painting—a portrait of Kerner’s wife Marie as a bride—is excellently documented. We also gain a more precise impression of Klimt’s working method during this phase of his career. The article begins by describing the circumstances that led to the discovery of the painting. First, a content analysis contextualizes the most important information from these letters, relating this commission to well-known examples of Klimt’s early work. The client and the subject of the portrait are also introduced in more detail. By addressing contradictory information found in various sources regarding the subject’s identity and the dating of the work, the article goes on to offer further details about the painting’s creation. A concluding stylistic analysis positions the painting in the wider context of the artist’s existing early oeuvre.

Georg Klimt’s Pallas Athena

Patrick Werkner — 2024-12-18

Georg Klimt (1867–1931) was one of Gustav Klimt’s younger brothers and a notable creator of repoussé metalwork. Examples of this work include the frames for well-known paintings by Gustav Klimt—such as Pallas Athena from 1898 and Judith 1 from 1901—as well as the doors of the Secession Building designed by Joseph Maria Olbrich. The artist repeatedly employs the motifs of wistful or dreamlike girls and young women, decoratively enhanced with jewels and using playful contours in a soft Jugendstil manner. This article presents a previously unpublished, signed example of Georg Klimt’s repoussé metalwork: a depiction of Pallas Athena as a notably youthful goddess in a tondo with a diameter of around 36.5 centimeters. This was created in the context of a number of other representations of Pallas Athena or Minerva being placed on Vienna’s Ringstrasse, as well as works by Gustav Klimt and specific pieces by Franz von Stuck. In terms of both motif and style, comparisons with these representations underline the quality of this work and suggest that it was created between 1893 and 1898.

Contextualizing a Monument of Art History

Sophie Morawitz — 2024-12-18

Located in Pernštejn Castle, not far from Brno in present-day Czechia, is a remarkable Renaissance panel painting. It portrays 23 people in front of a veduta of a town; presiding over them, enthroned on clouds, is God the Father and the dove of the Holy Spirit. The latest research has revealed that the painting is a previously unknown family portrait of the Steyr burgher and city judge (from 1522 to 1525, and then in 1531) Coloman Dorninger (died 1552), his deceased first wife Martha Trodl, his second wife Anna Oefferl, and their 20 children. The landscape in the background represents the oldest known view of the Upper Austrian town of Steyr. The work is thus a rare and valuable locus for historical and genealogical research. Building on such research, this article also acknowledges the panel painting’s great art historical significance. I analyze the iconography, technique, and size of the object as typical of a culture of memorialization in which a strong desire existed for highly individual and recognizable memorial objects with a close connection to the location in which they were to be viewed. By exploring how the object was used, I investigate the organizing principles and interactions that shaped this multifaceted work. Such an examination—which places a work in the context of its functions, the motivations of its donor, and its spatial contexts—enables a richer and more realistic understanding of medieval and early modern pictures.

A Key Piece of the Puzzle

Romuald Kaczmarek — 2024-12-18

At the Archdiocesan Museum in Wrocław (Breslau before 1945), a missing element from the wing of the fifteenth century Florian Altar Retable was identified. Attributed to an anonymous Styrian master, the now deconstructed and disseminated altarpiece would once have consisted of a centerpiece with folding two-sided panels on a left and right wing, which formed the Sunday and workday sides of the altar. The panels showed scenes from Christ’s childhood on the front and the martyrdom cycle of St. Florian on the reverse, although many of the panels have now been split into individual scenes. Five paintings from the altar are held in the Universalmuseum Joanneum in Graz, Austria. Since 2019, a sixth painting has been held in an unknown private collection in France. Correspondingly, the two-sided panel in Wrocław—the only one that remains intact—depicts the circumcision of Jesus on the front and the drowning of St. Florian in the Enns River on the back.

The discovery reveals important information about the content of the altar: The complete, unsplit panel in Wrocław confirms the iconography of the wings, as well as providing important clues as to the sequence of the scenes. That the Drowning of St. Florian in the Enns is second in this sequence of four scenes from the legend of St. Florian, before the Guarding of the Body, means that the circumcision scene must have come before the Adoration of the Magi. The most probable sequence for the scenes on the wings, both open and closed, can therefore be reconstructed horizontally from left to right. The research presented here also finds that the splitting up of the wings most likely took place in Styria circa 1800, and that, some time before 1866, the complete panel discussed here was moved to St. Lazarus Church in Wrocław.