Lot 1727 Dα

This painting is dated 1863 next to the monogram in the lower right-hand corner. According to the Feuerbach expert Jürgen Ecker, however, there is much to suggest that this spontaneously painted portrait of Anna Risi was made earlier, as early as 1860 and thus immediately after the painter's first encounter with his later model, muse and long-time lover. Feuerbach's friend Julius Allgeyer recorded their first encounter with Anna Risi. On the way from the Piazza Barberini to the painter's studio in late February 1860, he writes, they saw a woman "of remarkable beauty standing at a window with a child in her arms, as if in a picture frame". Anna Risi was the wife of a Roman cobbler, but her beauty had already caught the attention of other artists whom she had served as a model. With her classic profile, full black hair and noble figure, she corresponded perfectly with the ideal of beauty at the time. In the six years following her first encounter with Feuerbach, she was to sit as model for 28 of his paintings, including such important works as "The Mandolin Player" from 1868 (Bremen, Kunsthalle) or "Lucrezia Borgia" from 1864/65 (Frankfurt, Städelmuseum).