The Interrupted Pilgrimage (“The Sick Pilgrim”), 1858

In his 1858 painting The Interrupted Pilgrimage (The Sick Pilgrim), Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (1793–1865) depicted a dramatic scene: It shows humble people in rural attire, among them a young boy carrying a crucifix adorned with a floral wreath, who have embarked on a pilgrimage. They have stopped for a devotional rest amidst a rocky landscape, with the group of praying pilgrims visible in the background on the right. The foreground, however, shows an unconscious young woman in the glaring sunlight, attended to by the women with great solicitude. In this convincing figural composition in the form of an ascending triangle, Waldmüller followed in the long-standing tradition of Christian crucifixion depictions showing the crucified Christ on the top, and only his favorite apostles and the women at his feet, with Mary, the mother of Christ, having sunk to the ground in the center. Hinting at grand themes within ostensibly insignificant situations is a characteristic hallmark of Viennese Biedermeier painting.

MK, 2021