Alexander-Maximilian Seitz (German, 1811-1888)
THE PROPERTY OF A SOUTHEASTERN COLLECTOR
Alexander-Maximilian Seitz (German, 1811-1888)

The Angel Appearing to Joachim

细节
Alexander-Maximilian Seitz (German, 1811-1888)
The Angel Appearing to Joachim
signed, inscribed and dated 'A M Seitz Inv Pinxit Roma 1866' (lower right)
oil on panel
32½ x 41 in. (82.6 x 104.1 cm.)
Painted in 1866
拍场告示
Please note that this work will be offered with no reserve.

拍品专文

The Munich-borm artist Maximilian Seitz painted The Angel Appearing to Joachim in 1866 in Rome, where he lived for most of his life as a second generation leader of the Nazarene movement in German painting, Like Peter Cornelius, his teacher, Seitz was committed to art of high moral aspirations, with strict standards of drawing and elaborately researched detail. Looking back to the Renaissance examples of Raphael and D,rer, the Nazarenes celebrated long-neglected Biblical subjects and traditional stories from German history.

The Angel Appearing to Joachim depicts Gabriel informing the childess tribal elder Joachim that he and his aging wife Anne were to become the parents of Mary, a special child who should be dedicated to God and who, in turn, would give birth to Jesus. The story comes from the Apocrypha and the Golden Legend, rather than the generally accepted Old Testament. Seitz may have come to the unusual subject through his own Biblical research or, more likely, he might have been directed toward it by a patron who followed the ongoing efforts of the Catholic Church to elevate the role of Mary in religious practice during the nineteenth-century.

We are grateful to Alexandra Murphy for researching and preparing this catalogue note.