Arnold Böcklin Swiss, 1827-1901, in collaboration with Peter Bruckmann, 1850-1925 created in 1887 in Zurich

Peter Bruckmann;
Given to Hans Sandreuter (Arnold Böcklin’s student on 21^st February 1895, Haus Mohrhalde, Riehen (near Basel), died 1901;
To his widow, Margaretha Sandreuter-Siegmund, Riehen;
Karl Siegmund-Lünd (executive of the Sandreuter Estate), Riehen, died 1980;
Swiss private collection, since 1982

Arnold Böcklin was one of the most influential painters of Central Europe in the late 19^th Century. His symbolist interpretation of classical mythology made a great impact on his contemporaries and fascinated a younger generation of artists including the surrealist painter Giorgio di Chirico.

Böcklin is one of a diverse group of painters across Europe who turned their attention to sculpture towards the end of the 19^th Century, infusing it with colour; an unorthodox approach which unleashed new possibilities in sculpture. The most vocal of these painters was Jean-Léon Gérôme who made the colouration of sculpture something of a cause célèbre as witnessed by the entitling of his painting Sculpturae vitam insufflate picture (Painting breathes life into sculpture). Like Gérôme, Böcklin was fascinated with the antique and the recent discovery, proved by Gottfried Semper and Georg Treu, that ancient marbles had been polychromed, a fact which Böcklin claimed always to have known. Closer to his own circle were the painters Max Klinger and Fernand Khnoppf who also created polychromed sculptures.

Böcklin’s Medusa refers to his interest in the antique and its polychromed sculpture, whilst interpreting the myth in an intensely symbolist style. Medusa was a theme that Böcklin had explored through a series of paintings. This apotropaic image of the living, severed head was highly suited to a symbolist treatment as it plays on both fear and attraction, the real and the imaginary. Using the shape of an actual shield, and utilising the two and three dimensions of painting and sculpture, Böcklin has created a conjurer’s illusion.

In his collaborations between sculpture and painting Böcklin worked with his son-in-law Peter Bruckmann. Blühm has proposed that in the case of the Medusa, Bruckmann modelled the shield and Böcklin added the colour, although the two artists are known also to have exchanged these roles. The first version of the relief was broken on its return from the polychrome sculpture exhibition at the Nationalgalerie, Berlin in 1885. This model is the second version of which a cast is in the Kunsthaus Zürich. Another cast of the second version was sold in these rooms on 12^th  December 2003.

RELATED LITERATURE
Blühm, pp. 134-135; Schmid, Plastische Werke, no. 6