The New Salome, c. 1903

The German sculptor, painter and graphic artist Max Klinger (1857–1920) created this bronze statue around 1903. Klinger attended the Großherzoglich Badische Kunstschule in Karlsruhe and the Royal Academy of the Arts in Berlin. He was one of the most renowned modern artists in Europe around 1900. His reputation was also owed to the fact that he had broken with the classicist ideal of monochrome marble statues in light of new findings about the polychromy of ancient sculptures: Mixed materials and colorfulness became the hallmarks of Klinger’s sculptures. This bronze statue, called New Salome, is based on such a polychrome figure in plaster and marble. Klinger realized a first plaster model in 1887/88 and created the marble version in 1893. The bronze caster Hermann Gladenbeck from Berlin subsequently executed small-scale replicas (so-called reductions) in bronze, with the consent of the artist. Like no other, the biblical figure of Salome, who triumphs over men, solidifies the patriarchal fear of overly strong women and their fateful influence on men. This type of woman, described as “femme fatale” in French, found a significantly frequent reception in the arts and culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

MR, 2022