Frederick the Great Playing the Flute at Sanssouci explained

Artist:Adolph Menzel
Frederick the Great Playing the Flute at Sanssouci
Medium:oil on canvas
Year:1852
Height Metric:142
Width Metric:205
Museum:Alte Nationalgalerie
City:Berlin

Frederick the Great Playing the Flute at Sanssouci or The Flute Concert is an 1852 oil on canvas history painting by the German painter Adolph Menzel. It depicts Frederick the Great, King of Prussia playing the flute at an evening concert at Sanssouci and is now in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin.[1]

Menzel was one of the most popular and important Realist painters of the 19th century, and was ennobled as Adolph von Menzel in 1898. His works form an important record of life in Prussia at the time, especially the life of Frederick the Great. Sanssouci (meaning Free of Care), was Frederick's summer palace at Potsdam, near Berlin.

The painting depicts, in a pre-impressionistic, painterly 19th-century style, an 18th-century musical soirée at the palace at which a piece of music is being played with King Frederick himself playing the flute center stage. However, the monarch’s features represented in the painting are highly idealized as Menzel avoids showing Frederick with his aquiline nose,[2] although he must have known the death mask[3] of the Prussian king.[4]

In front of Frederick sits his chamber ensemble and to his rear an audience of dignitaries and noble ladies. The focus of the work is not on the music but rather on Frederick and the ambience created by the interior design, the furniture, the chandelier and candlelight and the ladies' elaborate dresses.

The assembly is made up of some of the leading names of the day, namely:

According to his own words, Menzel was not so much interested in depicting the people in his painting, but rather in showing the lighting situation with the many candles. He is said to have confessed to a visitor that he had "actually only painted the picture because of the chandelier".[5]

See also

Bibliography

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Flötenkonzert Friedrichs des Großen in Sanssouci . Flute Concert of Frederick the Great at Sanssouci . 2024-06-05 . . de.
  2. Bernd Krysmanski, "Menzel continues to idealise the king’s nose", in Does Hogarth Depict Old Fritz Truthfully with a Crooked Beak? – The Pictures Familiar to Us from Pesne to Menzel Don’t Show This, ART-dok (University of Heidelberg: arthistoricum.net, 2022), pp. 20-22.
  3. Web site: Die Werke Friedrichs des Großen, 7, S. uc_p14, Abb. 1. friedrich.uni-trier.de.
  4. Several death masks hung on Menzel's studio wall, including that of the Prussian king. See Gisela Hopp, "Menzels 'Atelierwand' als Bildträger von Gedanken über Kriegsnot und Machtmissbrauch," Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, 41 (1999), supplement, pp. 131–138.
  5. Günther Thiersch, “Das Flötenkonzert”, in Deutsche Maler im 19. Jahrhundert: Zwanzig Meisterwerke aus dem Besitz der Nationalgalerie Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1979), p. 139.

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