Point of View #27
A Masterpiece and Its (Almost) Forgotten Collector
The So-Called Benda Madonna and the Legacy of Gustav von Benda
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Front matter
pp. 1–3 Download (PDF, 3.5 MB)
A Masterpiece and Its (Almost) Forgotten Collector
The So-Called Benda Madonna and the Legacy of Gustav von Benda
Guido Messling
pp. 4–11 Download (PDF, 6.2 MB)
Abstract
The Master of the Benda Madonna was one of the leading artists active on the Upper Rhine in the circle of Martin Schongauer in the late fifteenth century. Before he produced the eponymous panel now in Vienna in or shortly after 1490, he presumably spent some formative months or years in the Low Countries: both the head of the Virgin and the composition are clearly indebted to Netherlandish templates. Unlike the remainder of his oeuvre, however, the painting lacks any reference to Schongauer’s engravings.
The Restorer’s Point of View
Anneliese Földes
pp. 12–14 Download (PDF, 3.5 MB)
Abstract
The panel Virgin and Child (the so-called Benda Madonna) was comprehensively restored and examined in connection with a diploma thesis and in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna; the examination revealed and documented the work’s outstanding quality, its characteristic handling and unusual choice of materials. The findings document technological aspects of the idiom of the anonymous and little-researched Master of the Benda Madonna.
Gustav von Benda’s Bequest
Konrad Schlegel
pp. 15-20 Download (PDF, 3.0 MB)
Abstract
Gustav von Benda (1846–1932) was a wealthy merchant and dedicated connoisseur and collector. His collection, regarded as the foremost private collection in Vienna, comprised numerous exquisite sculptures, paintings, pieces of furniture, Renaissance parade arms, gold- and silversmith works, majolica, and numerous other artefacts. In keeping with his public spiritedness, the unmarried and childless collector decided to leave everything to the Republic of Austria; the majority of objects (265 artefacts) went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna.
Acknowledgements, Photography Credits, Imprint
p. 21 Download (PDF, 54 KB)
Authors
Anneliese Földes
Read conservation and restoration of paintings and polychromed sculptures at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (graduated in 2021). Awarded a one-year graduate internship in paintings conservation at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam (2017/18), and worked in the Restoration Workshop of the Picture Gallery and the Scientific Laboratory of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Since 2021 conservator (position financed by the DFG – German Research Foundation) at the Doerner Institute, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, with the interdisciplinary research project studying fifteenth and sixteenth-century Venetian paintings at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.
Guido Messling
Read art history, modern history and media studies/museum management at the Freie Universität Berlin, where he graduated (PhD) in 2002. 2001–2005 intern and interim head of the education dept. of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. Then compiler for the series New Hollstein German, wrote several cat. raisonnés of Early German drawings, and worked as an independent curator. Since 2011, curator of German Painting at the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna.
Konrad Schlegel
Studied art history, classical archaeology, and communications at the Universities of Augsburg, Vienna, and Paris. Gained his PhD at the University of Vienna in 2000 (PhD thesis on ‘Arno Breker und die Repräsentationskunst im Dritten Reich’/‘Arno Breker and State Art in the Third Reich’). Joined the staff of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in 1999; initially a staff member of the education dept., since 2011 curator of early modern sculpture in the Kunstkammer Vienna and the Imperial Treasury. Publications on Renaissance and Baroque sculpture, the history of the collection, the history of reception theory, and twentieth-century art history.
