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Nanna by Anselm Feuerbach (German) - Oil on canvas / c. 1861 - Schack-galerie (Munich, Germany) #womeninart #art #oilpainting #portraitofawoman #artwork #AnselmFeuerbach #Feuerbach #GermanArtist #womensart #fineart #SammlungSchack #SchackGalerie #neoclassicism #BayerischeStaatsgemäldesammlungen
Nanna was a popular Italian art model. Her real name was Anna Risi. She was a muse and mistress of German painter Anselm Feuerbach. He admired her beauty so much that he painted her at least twenty times … including this portrait of her sitting almost expressionless in profile looking to our right holding a large open feather fan in her right hand. Her dark hair is braided in a severe, pulled-back fashion. She wears a richly-detailed dark purple, patterned shawl over a light lavender underdress, which is visible at the lower portion of the painting. She is wearing earrings and a necklace, but it is the large, ornate hand fan of light bone color leaves and vibrant, deep reddish-mauve feathers that draws our attention. Risi was married to a cobbler and lived in Trastevere, a working class neighborhood in Rome. Her striking features caught the eye of various artists who came to the city for inspiration, and she modeled for a number of paintings and sculptures in her early 20s. But it wasn't until Frederic Leighton, who would become the President of the Royal Academy in London, that her face became known to the world. Leighton's series of paintings of Risi caught the eye of the Prince of Wales and other notables, canonizing her forever. From there, Risi became the obsession of Feuerbach, who painted dozens of paintings of his lover. By then, Risi had left her family and was living with the artist. Feuerbach probably did much to improve Risi's circumstances and style, but the artist was also irritable and suffered from syphilis. After awhile, Risi ran off with a "rich Englishman," only to return to Feuerbach and beg his forgiveness; however, the artist already had a new muse at that time, so he rejected Risi. He wrote: "Yesterday her predecessor accosted me in greatly reduced circumstances … But I merely waved to her from a distance.”
April 12, 2025 at 7:36 PM
fritzwaldinger.bsky.social
In Munich
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September 13, 2025 at 11:57 AM