Moritz von Schwind
The Four Times of Day (The Night), um 1860
Öl auf Leinwand, Durchmesser 37,5 cm
1869 durch Adolf Friedrich Graf von Schack erworben
Inv. Nr. 11566
The Four Times of Day (The Night)
Romantic authors and artists seized on the times of day as a way of conveying symbolic messages. The passage of the day from morning to night could be made to represent the development over time of nature and human life. These four circular images, or tondi, reproduce separately the motifs that Schwind had depicted on the frame of his painting Symphony (Neue Pinakothek, Munich).