SCHADOW, Wilhelm von
(b. 1788, Berlin, d. 1862, Düsseldorf)

Mignon

1828
Oil on canvas, 119 x 92 cm
Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig

In the Romantic period, beside the maternal, womanly woman a new form of idealization appeared, "the eternal feminine being", who, according to Goethe "drew man upward". First she appears as the sum of noble qualities, as in Mignon by Wilhelm von Schadow - angelically pure, artistic but pensive.