Lot 50: FRIEDRICH KARL STEINHARDT

signed Steinhardt Roma (lower right)

oil on canvas

GERMAN, B. 1844
THE BIRTH OF EVE

117 by 79 1/2 in.<br><br>297 by 201.9cm

Little is known of the life or career of Friedrich Karl Steinhardt beyond his birth in Frankfort in 1844; but his commanding painting of the Birth of Eve provides intriguing glimpses into the breadth of his training as well as the strength of his ambitions. Steinhardt painted his Eve in Rome (a living museum of religious imagery) as his signature informs us, probably in the early 1870s, where he certainly would have known Michelangelo's vision of the creation of woman in the Sistine Chapel. But Steinhardt turned away from the austerity of Michelangelo's example toward the lusher, more worldly, model of French painting. His composition, and especially Adam's position stretched across the foreground, strongly suggests that Steinhardt was emulating Le Paradis perdu (see fig. 1), the centerpiece of Alexandre Cabanel's monumental retelling of the Adam and Eve story, a commission for King Louis II of Bavaria. Widely heralded at the Exposition Universelle in 1867, and destined for prominent display in Munich, Cabanel's grand academic triumph would have set the standard that any young German artist aspiring to prominent commissions would have had to master.

Fig. 1, Alexandre Cabanel, Le Paradis Perdu, Private Collection