Hu
Back to results

An Aristocratic Couple as Adam and Eve Johann Michael Millitz

Artist

Johann Michael Millitz active in Vienna, 1725 – 1779

Date 1770s
Object type painting
Medium, technique canvas, oil
Dimensions

image: 90 × 68.3 cm
image (with frame): 104 × 86 × 9 cm, 6.5 kg

Inventory number 80.2M
Collection Old Hungarian Collection
On view Museum of Fine Arts, Second Floor, Variations on the Baroque  – Art in Hungary 1600-1800

Johann Michael Millitz graduated from the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts as a student of court painter Martin van Meytens. He primarily painted representative halflength portraits for the aristocracy of the Habsburg Monarchy. This allegorical portrait with an ironic tone is unique in his oeuvre. The faces of the aristocratic couple, depicted here as Adam and Eve, are in a peculiar contrast with the biblical environment and the bodies turned towards each other, suggesting that they were based on earlier, traditional portraits. Millitz must have modelled the composition on a pre-existing painting, as no other landscape depictions are known by him. The figures of Adam and Eve already possessing the knowledge of Good and Evil reflect the spirit of the Enlightenment, indicating that the portrait was commissioned by a person familiar with the French ideas of the period.

References

Garas, Klára, Magyarországi festészet a XVIII. században, Magyarországi barokk festészet 2, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1955.

This record is subject to revision due to ongoing research.

Recommended exhibitions