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Your galleryThe Actor Maximilian Korn in a Landscape
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Find the finger tucked into the closed book, then follow Korn’s gaze out of the picture to the right.
The sitter is Maximilian Korn, a famous actor in Vienna. He leans on a mossy rock with a finger in his book, as if someone has just interrupted his reading. Waldmüller knew the theater: his wife, Katharina Weidner, was a successful opera singer. He updates the Renaissance portrait with a landscape, letting the same sunlight fall on Korn and on the distant mountains.
Oil on panel · 31.5 × 26 cm · Art Institute of Chicago
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Details and source
- Museum title
- The Actor Maximilian Korn in a Landscape
- Artist
- Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (Austrian, 1793–1865)
- Date
- 1828
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Dimensions
- 31.5 × 26 cm (12 3/8 × 10 1/4 in.); Framed: 45.1 × 39.4 × 8.3 cm (17 3/4 × 15 1/2 × 3 1/4 in.)
- Credit line
- Gift of Jane B. Gidwitz
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Artist’s life 1793–1865
View in the AtlasGaller’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.