Lot 266 Dα

The depiction "Two Girls at a Fountain" is based on a famous painting by Eduard Bendemann (1811 - 1889), which was created in 1833. It is now part of the collection of the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf. It was painted in Berlin, where Eduard Bendemann had lived in the Schadowhaus since 1832. In choosing his subject, he referred to the earlier painting "Italia and Germania" by Friedrich von Overbeck, an incunabulum of the Nazarenes.

The motif of the two Leonores also refers back to Overbeck. They are the Princess of Este, Eleonora d'Este, and the Countess of Scandiano, Eleonora Sanvitale, from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "Torquato Tasso". The painting of the same motif by Carl Ferdinand Sohn (1805 - 1867), which was shown at the Berlin Academy exhibition in 1834, was rediscovered by Ulrich Gronert in 1995 and donated to the Landschaftsverband Rheinland. The painting has hung in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn since 1999. Another version, dated 1836 and commissioned by Count Athanasius von Raczyński, which differs mainly in terms of the landscape background and the balcony balustrade, is kept in the National Museum in Poznan. A slightly later version also exists that combines the two Leonores with the figure of the poet Tasso to form a larger composition (Düsseldorf, Museum Kunstpalast).