Adolph Menzel
The Artist's Foot, 1876

Artist
Adolph Menzel

Title
The Artist's Foot

Year of creation
1876

Technique and dimensions
oil on wood, 38.5 x 33.5 cm

Year of acquisition
1998

Referenced bottom right: A. Menzel / -76

Several times, especially in a large surviving drawing from 1894 (Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, N 245), Menzel turned to his own bare foot like a model. The small picture conveys the spontaneity of the idea, the situation of a bedridden person who experiences the spellbinding power of a familiar yet mysterious piece of himself. The foot, a part of the body that is usually despised, is observed with sacred seriousness, right down to the ramifications of its veins, down to the highlights on the toenails. Incoherent, fragmentarily isolated, with the big toe grotesquely extended towards the viewer, it resembles, even in the artificial lighting, the live casts of the Atelierwand, 1852. In its iconic frontality, it calls to mind images of the body of Christ.

Claude Keisch