Slide Show: Monkeys, Martyrs, and Gabriel von Max at the Frye
Image courtesy Don Tuttle.
Gabriel von Max, Entsagung (Renunciation), after 1900. Oil on wood panel. 10 3/16 × 7 5/16 in. The Daulton-Ho Collection.
Image courtesy Eduardo Calderón.
Gabriel von Max, Botaniker (The Botanists), after 1900. Oil on canvas. 25 × 31 3/4 in. Frye Art Museum, Charles and Emma Frye Collection, 1952.117.
Image courtesy Eduardo Calderón.
Gabriel von Max, Märtyrerin am Kreuz (The Christian Martyr), 1867. Oil on paper affixed to canvas. 48 × 36 3/4 in. Frye Art Museum, Charles and Emma Frye Collection, 1952.116.
Image courtesy bpk, Berlin / Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen – Neue Pinakothek / Art Resource, NY.
Gabriel von Max, Der Anatom (The Anatomist), 1869. Oil on canvas. 53 3/4 × 74 5/8 in. Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen – Neue Pinakothek, inv. no. 14680.
Symbols such as the gorilla and human skulls (top left) and moth (bottom right) hint at the life cycle from origin to decay, says Frye curator Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker. "It’s the whence and the whither: where we have come from, and where were are going."
Image courtesy Eduardo Calderón.
Gabriel von Max, Mater Dolorosa, after 1900. Oil on canvas laid on Masonite. 26 13/16 × 22 7/16 in. The Daulton-Ho Collection.
Mater Dolorosa, the Virgin Mary, mourns the death of her son Jesus, alone at the foot of the cross. "Max has depicted Mary’s flesh as ‘mortified,’ in a state of decomposition and transformation, to indicate both her own mortality and her profound grief." —Frye curator Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker
