The Nibelungen's End - The Death of Kriemhild

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (German, 1794-1874)

1845

Medium
Graphite and brush and brown washes on tan laid paper, with added strip of tan wove paper at top (restoration), laid down on brown wove paper
Classification
Drawing and Watercolor
Dimensions
Primary support: 50.4 × 63.8 cm (19 7/8 × 25 1/8 in.); Secondary support: 62 × 68.5 cm (24 7/16 × 27 in.)
Culture
Germany
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
Credit line
Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection
Rights
Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed

View at the Art Institute of Chicago

About this work

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld’s Nibelungen’s End—the Death of Kriemhild is one of several studies for an extensive fresco cycle for King Ludwig I of Bavaria’s Royal Palace in Munich. Ludwig’s prominent commission had a nationalistic bent and revived medieval German historical literature. The medieval Nibelungen poem centered on a female character, in this case the powerfully vengeful Kriemhild, and was adapted into an opera. Indeed, Richard Wagner started his Ring Cycle in 1848, three years after the date of this dramatic drawing.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0