Virgin and Child in a landscape

Ellenrieder was the first woman in Germany to enroll in an art academy (in 1813 in Munich), specializing in portraits and religious paintings (T. Engelsing and B. Stark, Einfach himmlisch! Die Malerin Marie Ellenrieder, 1791-1863, exhib. cat., Constance, Rosgartenmuseum Konstanz, 2013). Her later work is influenced by her encounter with the art of the Nazarene Brotherhood in Rome, where she stayed between 1822 and 1824, and that of Johann Friedrich Overbeck in particular. On her return, she was active as a court painter in Baden before moving back to her birth town Constance. This drawing, directly based on Raphael’s Madonna of the Meadows at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, can be compared in style and subject-matter to such works as a painting dated 1841 in the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe (D. Zimdars in Angelika Kauffmann (1741-1807), Marie Ellenrieder (1791-1863), exhib. cat., Constance, Rosgartenmuseum Konstanz, 1992, no. 56 M.E., ill.). The present drawing may have been intended as a cartoon for a painting; indeed, several cartoon by Ellenrieder survive (see ibid., nos. 27, 34, 35, 48, M.E., ill., p. 211, under no. 46).