Here you see portrayed, with the most masterful strokes in the world, child and God and
mother and Virgin
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 Return to Purity and
Piety in German Prints
Cordula Grewe
2 grewe
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
G
oethe 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.
3
 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. Afflicted since childhood with a fragile constitution,
7
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
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
4 grewe
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
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 5

Fig. C2. Carl Ferdinand Berthold (German, 1799–1838). Going to Church, 1832. Etching; sheet (cut within platemark) 10 x 15 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
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
6 grewe
15/
16
15/
16
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. 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
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
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
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 7
 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

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

8 grewe 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 9

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
10 grewe
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
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)
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)
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 11
 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
12 grewe
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
Fig. C8. Georg Jacob Felsing (German, 1802–1883), after Eduard Julius Friedrich Bendemann (German, 1811–1889). Two Girls at the Well, 1834–35.
Introducing the Fine Arts into Germany in 1836 (fig. C9),
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
he placed Italia and Germania as equal sisters to the left Academy of the Fine Arts, 1985-52-19678
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
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 13

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
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
14 grewe
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- the same size as Deger’s domestically scaled Andachtsbild
ing of a painted Saint Catherine — a work then attributed (devotional picture), a choice that points to the import-
to the young Raphael — exemplifies this cycle (fig. C11).32 ant function of reproductive prints as suitable surrogates
Published in 1825, it was the first print the Swiss engraver for cherished originals in the furnishing of a bourgeois
executed in Milan under the supervision of the famous parlor, or in this case bedroom. As a new clientele began
Italian printmaker Giuseppe Longhi. A decade later, when to demand high art at affordable prices, prints became a
the painting was still considered an early work of ­Raphael’s, sought-after medium that united decoration and devotion.
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
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
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 15
 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
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
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
16 grewe
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
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 17
 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
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
18 grewe
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
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 19

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
20 grewe
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
Fig. C16. Friedrich Wagner (German, 1803–1876), after Moritz Dan-
of 1876 to the Pennsylvania Academy of
iel ­Oppenheim (German, 1800–1882). Noah and His Family in the Ark,
the Fine Arts, 1985-52-18643
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
motif of Mary holding her toddler’s hand as they descend
Arts, 1985-52-19931
a broad staircase brought the scene into the experiential
world of the contemporary viewer. Ignaz Heinrich von Fig. C17. Maria Ellenrieder (German, 1791–1863). Mary Holding the
Wessenberg, a high-ranking church official in the diocese 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
of Ellenrieder’s hometown of Constance, heaped praise on
John S. Phillips bequest of 1876 to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine
his young protégée: Arts, 1985-52-13236
In this exemplary picture, the ideal majesty and beauty of the
Raphaelesque is felicitously blended with the pious simplic-
The life-size canvas soon became the subject of numerous
ity and grace of the early Florentine style. . . . The pictorial
reproductions, of which the most touching is surely the
idea is new and beautiful. Who would criticize her? She is,
original etching by the artist herself, executed shortly after
rather, worthy of admiration. Or why should the Madonna
the triumphal premiere of her canvas at an exhibition in
always only be depicted with the boy on her lap or carried in
Karlsruhe in 1826 (fig. C17). The irregular hatching and
her arms? Here the Christ Child appears more awe-inspiring,
ethereal lightness of the central figures in the print bring
authoritative, divine. The setting is of the utmost simplicity.
out the image’s naive immediacy and heartfelt nature, qual-
Thus the viewer’s attention is not distracted by anything.50
ities much cherished by the Romantic generation.
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 21

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.
note s
1. 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 darge­
stellt. 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.
22 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
2. See Andreas Henning, ed., Die Sixtinische Madonna: Raffaels
­Kultbild wird 500, exh. cat.  (Munich: Prestel, 2012), p. 39. The paint­
ing 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 C
­ onnoisseur,
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 ruhi­
gen 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 Kin­
der erhaben, durch ein Gesichte, aus welchem ein Strahl der Gott­
heit 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 mani­
festations, but a meta-art 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 Lad­
wein (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.deutsche-biographie.
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 Fried­
rich Müller,” p. 277. A restoration of Raphael’s Sistine Madonna in
1827 uncovered a curtain rod at the picture’s upper edge, still mis­
sing 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 Stend­
hal, The Life of Henry Brulard, trans. John Sturrock (New York: Pen­
guin Books, 1995), p. 453.
13. For an in-depth discussion of Kunstreligion (aesthetic religion)
versus religiöse Kunst (religious art) in the Nazarene context, see
Cordula Grewe, “Religious Revival and the Question of Moder­
nity in Nineteenth-Century Art,” in A Companion to Nineteenth-­
Century Art, ed. Michelle Facos (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell,
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,
­“Raffael-Kult und Raffael-Forschung: Johann David Passavant und
seine Raffael-Monographie im Kontext der Kunst und Kunstge­
schichte 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 sub­
stantial re-reading 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,
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 23
 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 discus­
sion 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 inven­
tion 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 pre-courtly
heroic world. Its hero, Siegfried, arouses envy and suspicion by
marrying Kriemhild, sister of King Gunther of the Burgundians. Her
24 grewe
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 prota­
gonists. Rediscovered in the nineteenth century, its most famous
adaptation is undoubtedly Richard Wagner’s opera cycle.
31. Removed from the wall and today a three-piece 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 pain­
ting 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 Pas­
savant, 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 Tübin­
gen), 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 Ehrlich­
keit — fangen will, daß sie nur erst glauben, es wären bloß die Zim­
merverzierungen, 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, quota­
tion 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 (Cam­ Moritz Oppenheim’s Return of the Volunteer,” in Cultural Studies of
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 11. Modern Germany: History, Representation, and Nationhood (Madi­
son: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), pp. 46–72, quotation on
37. The painting belongs to the outstanding collection of Overbeck
p. 53.
paintings amassed by Ludwig I of Bavaria, and today in Munich’s
Neue Pinakothek; see Andreas Blühm and Gerhard Gerkens, eds., 45. Georg Heuberger and Anton Merk, eds., Moritz Daniel Oppen-
Johann Friedrich Overbeck, 1789–1869: Zur zweihundertsten Wie- heim: Die Entdeckung des jüdischen Selbstbewesstsseins in der Kunst
derkehr seines Geburtstages, exh. cat.  (Lübeck: Museum für Kunst / Jewish Identity in 19th-Century Art, exh. cat.  (Cologne: Wienand,
und Kulturgeschichte der Hansestadt Lübeck, 1989), pp. 138–39, 1999).
cat.  25, col. pl. on p. 139; for an online image, see http://commons.­
46. Today in the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, the picture exists in
wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Friedrich_Overbeck_009.jpg.
several replicas, among others in an American private collection; see
38. Cordula Grewe, “Nazarene or Not? On the Religious Dimen­ ibid., p. 351, cats.  I.41–I.45, col. pl. on p. 87.
sion in the Düsseldorf School of Painting,” in The Düsseldorf School
47. Bärbel Kovalevski, Marie Ellenrieder, 1791–1863 (Berlin: Kova­
of Painting and Its International Influence, 1819–1918, ed. Bettina
levski, 2008).
Baumgärtel, exh. cat.  (Düsseldorf: Sammlung der Kunstakademie;
Petersberg: Michael Imhof, 2011), pp. 86–97. 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 Kunst­
39. Ralf Mennekes, “Steinbrück, Eduard Carl (Karl),” in Lexikon der
halle, Karlsruhe, inv. no. 514. For an illustration, see Kovalevski,
Düsseldorfer Malerschule, 1819–1918 (Munich: Bruckmann, 1997),
Marie Ellenrieder, p. 26, pl. 4, or http://swbexpo.bsz-bw.de/skk/
vol. 3, pp. 319–21, pl. 431.
detail.jsp?id=BBB2BC30433443E96E5A0BBEA841B439&img=1.
40. Erwin Panofsky, “Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait,” B
­ urlington
49. Marie Ellenrieder, Mary Holding the Hand of the Boy Jesus,
Magazine, vol. 64, no. 372 (March 1934), pp. 117–27, esp. p. 126, and
1824, oil on canvas, 73 x 47 5/8 inches (185.5 x 121 cm), Staatliche
Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and ­Character
Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe. For an illustration, see Kovalevski, Marie
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953), vol. 1, esp.
Ellenrieder, p. 27, pl. 5, or http://swbexpo.bsz-bw.de/skk/detail.
chap. 5, “Reality and Symbol in Early Flemish Painting: ‘Spiritualia
jsp?id=F5C4295949FE8F5D6031088A02E43571&img=1.
sub metaphoris corporalium,’” pp. 131–48.
50. Ignaz Heinrich von Wessenberg, Die christlichen Bilder: Ein
41. See Bodo Brinkmann, Der Bürgermeister, sein Maler und seine
Beförderungsmittel des christlichen Sinnes (Constanz: W. Wallis,
Familie: Hans Holbeins Madonna im Städel, exh. cat.  (Petersberg:
1827), vol. 1, pp. 338–40: “In diesem vortrefflichen Bilde hat sich
Imhof, 2004).
die ideale Würde und Schönheit des raphaelischen Styls, mit der
42. Quoted in Alfred Woltmann, Holbein and His Time, trans. frommen Einfalt und Anmuth des altflorentinischen glücklich ver­
F. E. Bunnètt (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1872), p. 157. For schmolzen. . . . Die Idee der Darstellung ist neu und schön. Wer
the German, see Woltmann, “Holbeins Madonna und ihre Deu­ möchte sie tadeln? Sie ist vielmehr bewundernswerth. Oder warum
tungen,” Recensionen und Mittheilungen über bildende Kunst, vol. 4, sollte die Madonna immer nur, den Knaben auf dem Schooß oder
no. 26 (1865), pp. 201–4, quotation on p. 203: “Nicht über den Wol­ den Armen tragend vorgestellt werden? Hier erscheint das Christus­
ken erscheint hier die göttliche Mutter, … sondern auf dem Boden kind erhabner, selbstständiger, göttlicher. Das Beiwerk in dem Bilde
dieser Erde. . . . Nicht mehr als Erscheinung, sondern leibhaft und ist von großer Einfachheit. Die Aufmerksamkeit des Beschauers
wirklich ist sie da.” The painting, now attributed to Bartholomäus wird daher durch nichts zerstreut.”
Sarburgh, is in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden.
51. See Andreas Henning, “Das Leben der Engelchen,” in Die Sixtini-
43. HildegardWesthoff-Krummacher, Als die Frauen noch sanft sche Madonna: Raffaels Kultbild wird 500, pp. 326–41.
und engelsgleich waren: Die Sicht der Frau in der Zeit der Aufklä-
52. See John Ittmann, “The Galeriewerk and the Reproductive Print
rung und des Biedermeier, exh. cat.  (Münster: Westfälisches Lan­
of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” pp. 000–000 in this
desmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Landschaftsverband
volume.
­Westfalen-Lippe, 1995).
44. Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, Erinnerungen, ed. Alfred Oppenheim
(Frankfurt am Main: Frankfurter Verlags-Anstalt, 1924), p. 75; cited
in Russell A. Berman, “Citizenship, Conversion, and Representation:
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 25