Corpus Christi (Werefkin)
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| Corpus Christi |
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| Marianne von Werefkin , around 1911 |
| Tempera on cardboard |
| 53 × 71.5 cm |
| Fondazione Marianne Werefkin , Museo comunale d'arte, Ascona |
Corpus Christi is the title of a painting that the Russian artist Marianne von Werefkin painted in Bavaria around 1911 . The work belongs to the holdings of the Fondazione Marianne Werefkin (FMW) in Ascona . There it has the inventory number FMW-0-0-26.
Technology and dimensions
It is a tempera painting on cardboard , 53 × 71.5 cm.
iconography
The scenery shows the panorama of a landscape in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps as a typical landscape format. Mountains can be seen in the background, some of which are still snow-covered and illuminated by the sun. In front of it there is a village in a depression , which is dominated by a white church tower with a large round clock that can be seen from afar . The nave and the roof of the tower are almost black. Elaborate and expensive slate roofing is probably meant. As a contrast to the pale slate roof, the painter shows a large building to the left of the church that is covered with bright red clay tiles. The red roofs with white chimneys of a house complex on the right shine in the same way. Ten fruit trees with rounded crowns form a bar in front of the village . In contrast to the latter, three slender trees that resemble poplars represent opposing shapes.
The subject of the picture
The subject of the picture is represented by a pastor who, coming from his village church, rushes to a believer in the country to give him the sacraments . He is dressed in a black, ankle-length cassock , over which he wears a white choir shirt . He covered his head with a kind of beret . As an Orthodox Russian , Werefkin observed the Catholic Church, monks and priests in Bavaria and repeatedly depicted and described them. Werefkin liked to deal with the folklore peculiarities of a region. Sensitized by the intentions of the Abramzewo artists' colony , she carefully observed the rural customs that were alien to her during high church festivities. As if in a brightly colored picture, she kept z. B. a Corpus Christi procession . Sometimes it is a reading priest in the seclusion of a monastery garden, another time a servant of God who avoids meeting women in a narrow alley on the way to the evening angelus .
Death boards
During a hike on a high path near the Scheyern Abbey , Werefkin and Jawlensky observed, deeply moved and with an almost archaeological thirst for knowledge, a special peculiarity of down-to-earth tradition, which they recorded in her diary: “We descend the laughing hills [...] A sinister one Forest limits the horizon. Ancient trees stand tightly together. And there something that makes our heart stop. Death boards lean against the trees along the road with memorial plaques for all the dead who have ever lived in this valley. [...] The boards carry crosses, but a smell of paganism rises from that strange forest with its ancient customs. "
literature
- Clemens Weiler : Marianne von Werefkin. In exh. Cat .: Marianne Werefkin 1860–1938. Municipal Museum Wiesbaden 1958, cat.no.48, undated (p. 10)
- Bernd Fäthke: Marianne Werefkin. Munich 2001, p. 158, fig. 177, ISBN 3-7774-9040-7
- Bernd Fäthke : Marianne Werefkin: Clemens Weiler's Legacy. In: Marianne Werefkin and the Women Artists in her Circle. (Tanja Malycheva and Isabel Wünsche eds.), Leiden / Boston 2016 (English), pp. 8–19, ISBN 978-9-0043-2897-6
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Jawlensky and his companions in a new light. Hirmer-Verlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-7774-2455-2 , p. 71
- ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Jawlensky and his companions in a new light. Hirmer-Verlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-7774-2455-2 , p. 72, fig. 62.