Lot 192 Dα

The subject of the two Leonores (Eleonore d'Este and Countess Eleonore San Vitale) from Goethe's "Torquato Tasso" was one of the most successful motifs in Carl Ferdinand Sohn's oeuvre. The initial version of this subject is today kept in the LVR-Museum in Bonn, and a second version comissioned by Count Athanasius von Raczynski which differs primarily in the treatment of the landscape background and balcony is kept in the national museum in Poznan (Posen). A slightly later version combining the two Leonores with figure of the poet Tasso is kept in the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf.
The present work is based on Sohn's first version painted in 1834, which was in turn inspired by Overbeck's famous painting "Italia und Germania" - which represented one of the key works of German Romanticism and strongly influenced the Düsseldorf school. Carl Ferdinand Sohn, who followed his tutor Wilhelm von Schadow from Berlin to the Rhineland, was one of the first generation of artists of this school.