[ANPPOM-Lista] michael lorenz sobre o retrato "inacabado" de mozart por joseph lange

[Carlos Palombini]

http://michaelorenz.blogspot.co.at/2012/09/joseph-langes-mozart-portrait.html
Joseph Lange's Mozart Portrait
 Joseph Lange <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Lange>'s unfinished
portrait of Mozart is one of the most popular and best known images of the
composer. Its somber coloring and its unfinished state have made it a
visual icon of Mozart in his Vienna years. Mozart's life, being tragically
cut short, is hauntingly paraphrased by the  incompleteness of the painting.


<http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-E1e15_Apkcc/UFmQRPDT1CI/AAAAAAAAAbg/WFD3i247b6E/s1600/Mozart.jpg>

And yet Mozart scholarship doesn't even know for sure when Mozart's
brother-in-law painted this portrait. In 1913 Edward J. Dent claimed that
it originates from 1791. After having met sharp criticism from Téodor de
Wyzewa <http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A9odore_de_Wyzewa> in a review
in the *Revue des Deux
Mondes*<http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Revue_des_Deux_Mondes>and
Edward Speyer, Dent in a later edition of his book
*Mozart's Operas *corrected the dating to 1782*. * In an article in the
1926 *Salzburger Museumsblätter* art historian Julius
Leisching<http://www.salzburg.com/wiki/index.php/Julius_Leisching>assigned
the Lange portrait to 1790. This dating did not gain acceptance
either and in 1931 Roland Tenschert in his book *Mozart. Ein Künstlerleben
in Bildern und Dokumenten* presented the portrait as having been painted in
1782. Otto Erich Deutsch seems to have pondered for several decades over a
possible dating of  Lange's work. In 1956 he dated the portrait with
"winter of 1782-83, curiously describing it as "a sketch in oils,
unfortunately never completed". This dating was influenced by the
assumption that Lange's portrait of Mozart was somehow related to his portrait
of Constanze Mozart<http://www.huntsearch.gla.ac.uk/cgi-bin/foxweb/huntsearch/DetailedResults.fwx?collection=art&SearchTerm=43746&reqMethod=Link>,
which since 1931belongs to the University of Glasgow as part of the Zavertal
Collection<http://www.gla.ac.uk/services/specialcollections/collectionsa-z/zavertalcollection/>and
is presumed to have been one of the two small portraits that Mozart
sent to his father on 3 April
1783<http://www.zeno.org/Musik/M/Schiedermair,+Ludwig/Die+Briefe+W.A.+Mozarts+und+seiner+Familie/Zweiter+Band/Neunte+Reihe/249.+an+den+Vater,+Wien,+3.+April+1783>:
"Auch folgen die 2 Portraits; – wünsche nur daß sie damit zufrieden seyn
möchten; mir scheint sie gleichen beyde gut, und alle die es gesehen sind
der nemlichen Meynung." ("The two portraits will follow; – I only wish that
you will be pleased with them. I think they are both good likenesses and
all who have seen them are of the same opinion.") Within the next five
years however Deutsch changed his opinion again and in his 1961 book *Mozart
und seine Welt in zeitgenössischen Bildern* (published as part of the NMA)
he assigned the Lange portrait to 1789. This dating (which since then has
been generally accepted by Mozart scholarship) is based on Mozart's remark
in a letter to his wife from 16 April
1789<http://www.zeno.org/Musik/M/Schiedermair,+Ludwig/Die+Briefe+W.A.+Mozarts+und+seiner+Familie/Zweiter+Band/Zehnte+Reihe/297.+an+die+Gattin,+Dresden,+16.+April+1789>:
"ich möchte gerne wissen ob schwager Hofer den Tag nach meiner Abreise
gekommen ist? ob er öfters kommt, so wie er mir versprochen hat; – ob die
Langischen bisweilen kommen? – ob an den *Portrait* fortgearbeitet wird?"
("I want to know if brother-in-law Hofer visited the day after my
departure? If he is visiting more often, as he promised me; – Whether the
Langes come by now and then? – If work on the portrait is being continued?")

I have been studying Joseph Lange's life and work for over ten years and I
assume in all modesty that I have seen more of Lange's paintings than
anybody else. Lange's Mozart portrait has been the object of my scrutiny
for a long time and I have always been intrigued as to how its appearance
and its state of preservation have changed during the last 60 years.
Moreover I was always sceptic regarding its supposed "state of
incompleteness", which owing to the unusually straight edges of paint on
Mozart's body is at odds with many other unfinished paintings I know. Could
it be that the painting was not unfinished, but represents an enlargement
of an orignal small portrait which then was never completed? There is a
model for this particular procedure. It turns out that this model is none
other than Lange's portrait of Constanze Mozart which today is on display
in Glasgow. That this painting is an enlarged version of a small portrait
(previously 18 x 13 cm, now 32,3 x 24,8 cm) has long been known and has
been pointed out several times in the literature, most recently in the
catalogue of the 1991 Mozart exhibition in Salzburg. The irregular size of
the original portrait (as shown approximately in the following picture) was
caused by cutting and the obviously bad state of canvas quality on the
lower left corner of the original painting. The enlargement was either sewn
or glued to the original painting after it had been turned about eleven
degrees to the right.


<http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ywLAlesqeyE/UFw0AgBUJOI/AAAAAAAAAew/VlBgcz4rkgo/s1600/Constanze+marked.jpg>

 The difference of color between the old and the new canvas becomes
especially visible with the picture's histogram being modified:


<http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VbPNtFQWntw/UFwt7N91cYI/AAAAAAAAAec/vmG6xBknAic/s1600/Constanze+light.jpg>

 It is not known when the Constanze portrait was enlarged. Old black and
white photographs, taken before a very intensive restoration of Mozart's
portrait in the early 1960s, show that the painting underwent a similar
treatment as the painting in Glasgow: i.e. a miniature, showing only
Mozart's head was turned about four degrees to the right and inserted into
a bigger canvas, which was supposed to show Mozart's upper body and the
shape of a piano, but later remained unfinished. A photograph of the
unrestored painting (in deplorable state of conservation), taken in 1946,
eerily shows the distinct contour of the original small painting:


<http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vPLCO5zl2Kg/UFnK7UnSNpI/AAAAAAAAAcc/wVRlNQ9rOmI/s1600/Mozart,+original.jpg>

The original miniature, about 19 x 15 centimeters in size, looked like this
(in exact size relation to the colored picture above):


<http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JVmUtYl9fd4/UFnNZblgzhI/AAAAAAAAAck/zDHx_9P8Oio/s1600/Mozart+clip.jpg>

On 29 June 2010 I visited Mozart's birthplace and examined the Lange
portrait, which at that time had been taken from the exhibition to be
scrutinized by the museum staff. I told Dr. Großpietsch and Dr. Ramsauer
about my hypothesis and had to realize (because the Mozarteum is a museum
like no other) that there is no scholarly documentation on the 1963
restoration of the painting and the Mozarteum had never X-rayed the
portrait. The restoration of course has rendered the visible distinction
between the original minature and the enlargement almost imperceptible. Not
only was the gaping horizontal crack that is visible on old photographs
filled with putty, the edge of the brown paint at the lower end of the
painted area on Mozart's chest was also horizontally adjusted, as if to
hide the tilted original miniature:


<http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-53UXdIW3LxM/UFnpSDZaiAI/AAAAAAAAAdY/etdpzIVTem4/s1600/Mozart+comparison.jpg>

Given the current state of the painting, the different canvas of the small
original portrait is only discernible as a slightly lower rectangular area,
when looked upon in a very flat angle in backlight. Therefore I concluded
that in the course of the enlargement the small painting was mounted from
behind to the larger canvas. The Mozart portrait by Joseph Lange is not an
unfinished painting of "Mozart at the Piano", but an unfinished enlargement
of an original miniature of Mozart's head.

What are the implications of this discovery? The original miniature
portraits of Mozart and his wife painted by Lange, both of which were later
enlarged, could well be the two small paintings that Mozart sent to his
father in April 1783. The Mozart miniature portrait from 1782-83 is "lost",
because for over 200 years it has been hidden in plain sight in the
"unfinished" painting of Mozart at the piano. Constanze's small portrait
was successfully resized, while the enlargement of Mozart's portrait - at
some time sent back to Vienna - was never completed. That Lange had not
finished the work by 1812 may well have been caused by the fact that at
this time he had long separated from Constanze's sister and had started a
third family with a woman 30 years his junior. The enlargement with the
addition of the piano could have been the work Mozart was referring to in
his 1789 letter from Dresden ("an den *Portrait* fortgearbeitet"). Recently
some pseudo-scholars tried to cast doubt on the authenticity of the Lange
portrait. Their aim was twofold: first, to boost the credibility of the
so-called "Hagenauer
Mozart<http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/Hagenauer_Mozart_mid-1780s_press_quality.jpg/345px-Hagenauer_Mozart_mid-1780s_press_quality.jpg>"
which simply doesn't resemble the man on Lange's painting. And second, to
add probability to the absurd idea that "the man in the red frock" could
have been the small portrait that Mozart sent to Salzburg in 1783. One
proponent of this crude hypothesis even went so far as to visualize Mozart
wearing a pigtail on the Lange portrait, which "can't be seen because of
the chiaroscuro".

As a portraitist Joseph Lange was one of the best 18th-century amateur
painters I have come across. He enjoyed a first rate education at the
Vienna Academy of Arts and his technique, his shading, his mixture of skin
tones was thoroughly professional. I have never seen any reproduction of
the Salzburg Mozart portrait that really does justice to the artistry of
color and glazing technique of the original. Contrary to a wide-spread
misconception, caused by an entry in Joachim Daniel
Preisler<http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_Daniel_Preisler>'s
diary, Lange did not give up painting in 1788, but diligently pursued this
activity into his old age. Many of Lange's masterpieces, such as the group
portrait of his mistress Therese Koch (1780-1851) and her three daughters,
are still extant in the possession of Lange's descendants. Among the many
amazing portraits by Lange the following is my favorite. P. Maurus (Franz
Borgius) Stützlinger (b. 6 January 1775 Gmunden, d. 7 August 1842 Salzburg)
was elected abbot of Lambach
Abbey<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambach_Abbey>in 1812. In 1820 he
was deposed owing to the abbey's complete bankruptcy.
Joseph Lange's life-sized portrait of Maurus Stützlinger was painted in
1815:

<http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Fns8u0JyB-Q/UFoBz0iY69I/AAAAAAAAAds/ccpYTj3Mpww/s1600/Abt+Maurus.JPG>

-- 
carlos palombini
www.researcherid.com/rid/F-7345-2011
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