Die Plejaden is a fully finished study for a tondo for a multi-paneled fresco project for the wall decoration of a music room in homage to Mozart, Beethoven, and Joseph Haydn. The project, which was never realized, was intended to comprise several panels of similar format, each celebrating a piece of music. They included one illustrating Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, a watercolor study, which is in the Hamburger Kunsthalle; and another of Beethoven’s Chorphantasie in c-moll, op. 80, the oil study for which is in the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Neue Pinakothek (Fig. 1). We know from an annotated pencil drawing in the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich, titled by Schwind Symphonie Nr. 3, that the present representation of the seven Pleiades was destined for a panel dedicated to Beethoven’s eponymous symphony, also known as the Eroica, op. 55.

The Pleiades were the seven beautiful daughters born to the titan Atlas and the sea-nymph Pleione. They served as virgin attendants to Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. According to one Greek legend, the beauties were being pursued by the amorous hunter Orion. The gods saved them by transforming them into twinkling stars. After his death, Orion too became a constellation, forever chasing the beautiful young maidens across the sky.

In common with the other panels, the Eroica fresco would have been framed in an architectural arch, and divided into three storeys representing the stages of the symphony. The lunette at the top was reserved for the tondo of the Pleiades. The symphony begins with Aurora as the first movement, followed by the myth of Hero and Leander as the adagio, and the tondo with the Pleiades as the last movement, which leaves the Scherzo unnamed and summarily called 'lustiger Fries' (merry frieze) by Schwind in his drawing.

Born into and brought up in a musical home in Vienna, Moritz von Schwind made the acquaintance of Franz Schubert at an early age. This friendship and the composer’s extensive connections in the music world fostered in the young artist a lifelong passion for performances and inspired many of his works. As early as 1825 he embarked on an ambitious suite of 30 drawings illustrating Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, sold at Sotheby’s in London in 2006. After his plans for a Schubert room with depictions of his famous Lieder cycles did not come to fruition, in 1850 he started work on his sketches for the music room.