![]() #Dead island 2 song windowsįurthering the funerary theme are what appear to be sepulchral portals and windows on the rock faces.īöcklin himself provided no public explanation as to the meaning of the painting, though he did describe it as "a dream picture: it must produce such a stillness that one would be awed by a knock on the door". The title, which was conferred upon it by the art dealer Fritz Gurlitt in 1883, was not specified by Böcklin, though it does derive from a phrase in an 1880 letter he sent to the painting's original commissioner. Not knowing the history of the early versions of the painting (see below), many observers have interpreted the oarsman as representing the boatman Charon, who ferried souls to the underworld in Greek mythology. Montenegrin island Saint George near Perast, is another likely contender as the inspiration for the painting The water would then be either the River Styx or the River Acheron, and his white-clad passenger a recently deceased soul transiting to the afterlife. Isle of the Dead evokes, in part, the English Cemetery in Florence, Italy, where the first three versions were painted. (In all, Böcklin lost 8 of his 14 children.) The cemetery was close to Böcklin's studio and was also where his infant daughter Maria was buried. The model for the rocky islet was perhaps Pontikonisi, a small, lush island near Corfu, which is adorned with a small chapel amid a cypress grove, perhaps in combination with the mysterious rocky island of Strombolicchio near the famous volcano Stromboli, Sicily. ![]() (Another less likely candidate is the island of Ponza in the Tyrrhenian Sea.)īöcklin completed the first version of the painting in May 1880 for his patron Alexander Günther, but kept it himself. In April 1880, while the painting was in progress, Böcklin's Florence studio had been visited by Marie Berna, née Christ (widow of financier Dr. Georg von Berna (1836–1865) and soon-to-be wife of the German politician Waldemar, Count of Oriola (1854–1910)). She was struck by the first version of this "dream image" (now in the Kunstmuseum Basel), which sat half completed on the easel, so Böcklin painted a smaller version on wood for her (now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York City). At Berna's request, he added the coffin and female figure, in allusion to her husband's death from diphtheria years earlier. Subsequently, he added these elements to the earlier painting. He called these works Die Gräberinsel ("Tomb Island"). (Sometimes the "Basel" version is credited as the first one, sometimes the "New York".) It was acquired by the Gottfried Keller-Stiftung in 1920. The third version was painted in 1883 for Böcklin's dealer Fritz Gurlitt. He hung it first at the Berghof in Obersalzberg and then, after 1940, in the New Reich Chancellery in Berlin.īeginning with this version, one of the burial chambers in the rocks on the right bears Böcklin's own initials: "A.B." (In 1933, this version was put up for sale, and a noted Böcklin admirer Adolf Hitler acquired it. It is now at the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin.)įinancial imperatives resulted in a fourth version in 1884, which was ultimately acquired by the entrepreneur and art collector Baron Heinrich Thyssen and hung at his Berliner Bank subsidiary. It was burned after a bomb attack during World War II and survives only as a black-and-white photograph.Ī fifth version was commissioned in 1886 by the Museum of Fine Arts, Leipzig, where it still hangs. This article appears to contain trivial, minor, or unrelated references to popular culture. Please reorganize this content to explain the subject's impact on popular culture, providing citations to reliable, secondary sources, rather than simply listing appearances.
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