Marie Ellenrieder
baptism of Lydia, 1861

Artist
Marie Ellenrieder

Title
Baptism of Lydia

Year of creation
1861

Technique and dimensions
oil on wood, 35 x 47 cm

Year of acquisition
2013

Marie Ellenrieder is one of the very few women who were admitted to study painting in the first half of the 19th century. Ellenrieder (1791–1863) studied from 1813 to 1816 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich under professors Johann Peter and Robert von Langer. From 1822 to 1825 she was able to continue her studies in Italy. Through the painter Louise Seidler from Jena/Weimar (1786–1866) she came into the circle of German artists around Friedrich Overbeck (Nazarene) in Rome.

Although Marie Ellenrieder was an excellent portrait painter, she devoted herself primarily to religious painting, for which she received commissions for large-format altarpieces and devotional pictures. She fulfilled the Nazarenes' demand for truth, purity and sentiment in her paintings. With her pictorial creations, Marie Ellenrieder contributed to the renewal of Romantic fine art in Germany. The "Baptism of Lydia" is one of her last paintings. It enriches the Alte Nationalgalerie's Nazerener collection for the first time with a work by this artist.

Philipp Demandt