The Belvedere Research Journal is a peer-reviewed open access e-journal, devoted to publishing innovative critical work concerned with art developments in former Habsburg Empire and Central Europe broadly defined from the medieval period to the present day.
Authors retain the copyright and full publishing rights without restrictions. They allow the BRJ to distribute and continue to make available the article in perpetuity under the license of Creative Commons CC BY International 4.0, unless otherwise stated. This license allows anyone to download, reuse, re-print, modify, distribute and/or copy the contributions. The works must be properly attributed to its author(s). It is not necessary to ask further permissions both to author(s) or journal board, although you are kindly requested to inform the BRJ for every reuse of the papers. After publication in the BRJ, authors may post their articles to any repositories or websites. The BRJ does not impose any embargo periods on the redistribution of the material. The authors may republish their content, but they must notify the BRJ before doing so and acknowledge the BRJ in the new publication. Copyright for illustrations and materials other than the text (e.g. videos, timelines, maps) may be held by individuals or institutions other than the BRJ and the author. These do not fall under the Creative Commons License. It is the responsibility of the author to obtain the relevant copyright when using images and other third-party materials.
Copyright (c) 2025 Christian Huemer, Johanna Aufreiter, Anna-Marie Kroupová, Luisa Ziaja, Katarina Lozo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
In Central Europe, especially in Poland, in the second half of the 19th century, Jewish artists engaged in a very particular form of nationalist discourse. Partly emulating their non-Jewish neighbors, Jewish artists sought to find visual manifestations to explain their layered subjectivities and identities. This study examines the work of Maurycy Gottlieb, a Jewish/Polish artist whose paintings exemplify the negotiation of Jewish identity with Polish national culture. Gottlieb attempted to manifest a visual form that simultaneously expressed his Jewish identity, his status as an Other in the eyes of the non-Jewish Pole, and his desire to be a constructive member of Polish society. Through dramatizations of the Self, Gottlieb’s use of self-portraiture—I argue—engages with the multiplicity of Central European culture, built on dynamic subjectivities and allegiances. The resulting identity Gottlieb expressed in his art is one of hybridity that shows a continual sense of belonging to oft-conceived mutually exclusive groups. As a result of his dialectically woven multiplicities of identity, we can use Gottlieb’s self-portraits to challenge the presumed homogeneity of cultural ethnonationalism often associated with the Central European region of his time. This study is part of a call to explore how multiple versions of national identity were simultaneously created in the region before ethnonationalism emerged as dominant after World War I.
Copyright (c) 2025 Julian Adoff https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Born in Dresden, Otto Hettner (1875–1931) was a painter and graphic artist of the early Modernist period who has long been largely overlooked by researchers. Hettner lived and worked in various locations in Germany and abroad, taught as a professor in Dresden, and acted as an intermediary in the sale of artworks (for artists including Edvard Munch). His now largely unknown work, which can only be found in a few public collections, is highly varied in terms of both style and content; it emerged around 1900 in an artistic arena shaped by Impressionism, Symbolism, Expressionism, and monumental painting. Upon his death, Hettner left an oeuvre of around 4,300 works, but confiscation and war reduced this number to the approximately 60 paintings that remain today. These include Picknick [Picnic], which Hettner painted in Fiesole near Florence in 1906. It was one of 58 works by the artist that could be seen at the autumn exhibition of the Hagenbund in Vienna in 1910, and it was acquired for the city’s Modern Gallery in 1911. This essay describes, for the first time, the context in which the work was produced, offers insight into the working methods of the artist during this very important phase of his career, and, with the help of selected reviews, traces the enormous success that he enjoyed in Vienna in 1910.
Copyright (c) 2025 Kati Renner https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This essay focuses on two seascapes from the Belvedere collection by the painter Lorenzo Valentino Butti (1805–1860; born in the port city of Trieste) that were completed in 1846: Seestück mit Scirocco [Seascape in the Sirocco] and Stürmische See auf seichtem Grund bei Malamocco [Stormy Seas in Shallow Waters near Malamocco]. While the first painting was presented as an example of the romantic mythologization of Venice in the exhibition Viva Venezia! (Belvedere, 2022), this analysis shows that both works are far more than mere decorative harbor scenes and were conceived by Butti as a pair, in both thematic and formal terms. By studying the richly detailed depiction of a range of ships, flags, and weather conditions—supported by iconographic close reading, archival research, contemporary press sources, biographical records, and maritime expertise—we connect the works with concrete historical events that occurred in 1844. An analysis of the specific description of the image and the meteorological conditions that it portrays obliges us to not only correct the title Seestück mit Scirocco by reverting to the original title, Seestück mit Sciroccal-Luft [Seascape with Sirocco Air], but also conclusively revise the location from Venice to Trieste. The commission from Emperor Ferdinand I during his visit to Trieste in 1844 appears to have had a dual purpose: The paintings not only document maritime incidents but also present the imperial claim to power of the Habsburg monarchy. The works also ultimately provided Butti an opportunity to enhance his image on the path toward becoming a marine painter to the imperial court.
Copyright (c) 2025 Anna-Marie Kroupová, Thomas Zimmel, Karl Klaus Körner https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
When on April 18, 1901, the decision was made in Paris to construct the first purpose-built embassy in Vienna, the ministerial authorities hoped to put an end to the never-ending letters of complaint from the ambassadors about the inadequacies of the Palais Lobkowitz, which was rented until the completion of the new embassy. Yet controversies around the French embassy continued: A much more intense tug-of-war played out among architects, ministers, and diplomats over the representation of the Third French Republic in the architecture and furnishings of the planned building. I examine the years-long struggle of the state architect Georges Chedanne with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Fine Arts, and the changing ambassadors on-site in Vienna. In particular, I trace the different positions, demands, and needs of the actors involved not only through written sources but also in the architectural and artistic program of the building on Schwarzenbergplatz. The primary tension at the heart of the planned embassy was that Chedanne envisioned a modern Gesamtkunstwerk somewhere between Art Nouveau and Eclecticism, whereas the Ministry of Foreign Affairs insisted on a self-confident representation of the Third Republic—both proposed styles conflicting with the diplomatic reality of the ambassador’s life. I argue that Chedanne attempted to face this precarious situation artistically: Not the history of France but the far less problematic history of French art should await the visitors at the embassy. This, however, did not spare the building decades of scorn from both French ambassadors and the Viennese public.
Copyright (c) 2025 Thomas Moser https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2024 Christian Huemer, Anna-Marie Kroupová, Johanna Aufreiter, Luisa Ziaja https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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.
Copyright (c) 2024 Romuald Kaczmarek https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Portrait of Marie Kerner von Marilaun as a Bride
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.
Copyright (c) 2024 Markus Fellinger https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Contextualizing a Monument of Art History
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.
Copyright (c) 2024 Sophie Morawitz https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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.
Copyright (c) 2024 Patrick Werkner https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Egon Schiele produced his first Expressionist work in 1910. Portraits and selfportraits turn their dramatic countenances toward the viewer. The origins of these vivid facial expressions and gestures have been a focus of Schiele scholars for half a century. The key question is whether the artist’s objective in creating these works was to depict an inner truth that goes beyond the facade of his subjects. This research article suggests that theatrical phenomena provided a stimulus for Schiele’s early Expressionism. I focus on the ubiquitous presence of the theatrical in the lives of a young generation of artists at the beginning of the 20th century in Vienna. In this context, the central source of inspiration for Schiele’s art was his friend, the artist Erwin Osen. Osen was brought up on the theater; his appearance, his range as a universal artist, and his (fictional) journeys made a lasting impression on Schiele. At the same time, Schiele was deceived and disappointed by Osen. For Schiele, the mask becomes the symbol for deception but also the medium for a new reality that is borrowed from the performing arts, and it dominates his portraits and self-portraits from 1910.
Copyright (c) 2025 Christian Bauer https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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.
Copyright (c) 2024 Laura Feurle https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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.
Copyright (c) 2024 Scott Messing https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Johanna Staude (1917–1918)
Academic researchers have long neglected investigating the female models depicted in the paintings of the principal artists of the Vienna Secession. A prominent example is Portrait of Johanna Staude, painted by Gustav Klimt in 1917–1918 and held in the collection of the Belvedere. When the work was acquired from the then 80-year old sitter in 1963, the museum did not make a comprehensive record of her life. Thus, Staude’s biography and the circumstances leading to the portrait’s creation remained largely unexplored. For the first time, this paper presents new insights into the subject, gained via intensive communication with the heirs of Johanna Staude’s estate and subsequent research into this material. This has enabled me to update and expand upon the facts of her life, while also shedding light on her family’s strong links to the art world and her own role in the Vienna art scene. I go on to stress that Klimt’s regular practice of resorting to anonymous models for his portraits of fashionable ladies suggests that this work is not a commissioned portrait. Finally, based on the example of Johanna Staude, I confirm the hypothesis that these fashionable portraits are realistic rather than fictional. Overall, this paper aims to promote a more comprehensive understanding of Gustav Klimt’s method.
Copyright (c) 2023 Franz Smola https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
In 1826, Johann Baptist von Lampi the Younger created Venus Sleeping on a Day Bed, a painting that would undergo a considerable reworking. After its acquisition by the Imperial Picture Gallery in 1828, large areas of the background were overpainted in black, as revealed by investigations carried out by the Belvedere’s restoration and conservation department in 2022. Through this extensive overpainting, the original figure of the winged Amor—and with it, an important compositional element—was lost. In this paper, I will first situate the original motif of the sleeping Venus with Amor in the earlier pictorial tradition. I will then use archive material to establish the date of this large-scale intervention in the painting. With the help of further case studies, I will show that overpainting was a common practice in the nineteenth century. Finally, I will use historical discussions of the painting to show how the overpainting resulted in a new yet erroneous interpretation of Venus Sleeping on a Day Bed as a hidden portrait of one of Napoleon’s lovers, subsequently becoming a topos of local Salzburg history.
Copyright (c) 2023 Katharina Lovecky https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2023 Christian Huemer, Anna-Marie Kroupová, Anna Ewa Dyrko https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Materializing Immaculacy in Sixteenth-Century Tyrol
The Innsbruck sepulchral chapel of Habsburg prince and sovereign of Tyrol, Archduke Ferdinand II (1529–1595), accommodates a generously sized Marian altarpiece, the focus of this study. Chased reliefs crafted from solid silver are mounted on ebony-veneered panels with ivory accentuating the moldings that frame the pictorial fields. This restrained material palette conjures a vision of the Virgin Immaculate and results in a display of silver on a monumental scale. In contrast to the Archduke’s extensive Kunst- and Wunderkammer at nearby Ambras Castle, the altarpiece has received relatively little scholarly attention. Drawing from diverse fields such as theology, botany, and music, this paper delves into the altarpiece's material and pictorial complexity and discusses the multifaceted layers of meaning that underpin the creation of this remarkable work. Considered within the context of the sepulchral chapel, hierarchies of matter, color, and space convey the Virgin’s singular status and her role as primary intercessor. Jesuit thought and new patterns of Marian devotion, not least under the influence of Peter Canisius, play a pivotal role in this context, which is framed against the backdrop of Habsburg piety and Counter-Reformation efforts. The altarpiece meaningfully embodies the theme of the Virgin Mary as mirror of virtue, in the tradition of speculum sine macula (a mirror without stain). At the same time, the silver’s tendency to tarnish and blacken draws parallels to the ambiguous tensions and complexities surrounding her immaculacy and theological beauty. This study also highlights the slippage between artistic practice and the broader context of Tyrolean silver mining and minting activity. At a time when the value of coined silver was becoming uncertain and its purity questioned, the altarpiece’s tarnished materiality demonstrates the degree to which moral and material virtue were subject to negotiation and open to ambiguous interpretation. Therefore, this paper also illuminates and investigates period concepts of material immaculacy, purity, and preciousness, which stand at the intersection of theological ideals, financial motivations, and artistic ambition.
Copyright (c) 2023 Stella Wisgrill https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0