Georges von HOESSLIN - Vierge au Papillon - (Budapest, 1851– Munich, 1923)

Cosmopolitan and a traveler from birth, Georges von Hoesslin came from a patrician family in Augsburg. He was born in Budapest, where his father was away on business, and later grew up in the United States, where his father, Theodor, provided him with a commercial education. In 1871, at the age of twenty, he began studying drawing in Munich under Alexander Strähuber at the School of Applied Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts. The progressive monumentality of his painting testifies to an artistic liberation. His compositions are striking for their gravity, sometimes austere, which nevertheless reveals a melancholic and dreamy sensibility. A Symbolist masterpiece, our painting depicts the Virgin in Majesty enthroned on a golden throne, an element borrowed from both Byzantine art and Jugendstil. Clad in a long red robe with shimmering, silken draperies, a white cloth covers her head and shoulders. Adopting an expression that is at once serious, gentle, and melancholic, this Madonna with clear eyes holds a black book on her lap, a reference to the Bible and the Tablets of the Law, symbols of knowledge of the mysteries. Seated at her feet on the pedestal is a naked Christ Child with red hair, offering her an apple in his outstretched left hand, both an echo of the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden and a prefiguration of Christ's sacrifice. To the left, a multicolored butterfly flutters in the blue, symbolizing the soul and the Resurrection. This mysterious scene unfolds in an equally ethereal mountain landscape. The upper background, dominated by deep, dark blue mountain peaks, creates a striking contrast with the golden sky, evoking the sacred and eternity. Below, a sea of cottony clouds suggests the altitude of the two figures. A true epiphany, His Virgin with Butterfly transcends religious iconography to offer a poetic meditation on the soul, art and eternity.