Sketch for “Our Lady of Armenia”

This 1893 canvas is a compositional sketch for Brandt's larger devotional subject depicting Our Lady of Armenia, reflecting a late-career turn toward religious and allegorical imagery that accompanied his continued interest in the eastern reaches of European Christian civilization. The concept of an Armenian Madonna carried particular resonance in the 1890s, a decade when awareness of the plight of Armenian Christians in the Ottoman Empire was growing in European consciousness. Brandt, known primarily for his Cossack and cavalry scenes, brought the same attention to historical costume and dignified human presence to his religious subjects. A preparatory sketch of this kind served to establish the primary pose, color relationships, and compositional balance before committing to a finished large-scale canvas — an academic practice Brandt would have absorbed during his Paris years under Cogniet. The work's relatively free handling and the visible working-through of compositional decisions distinguish it from his exhibition-grade productions, offering a window into the artist's creative process. The National Museum in Warsaw holds this as an important document of Brandt's rarely seen devotional work.

As a sketch rather than a finished exhibition piece, the handling here is notably freer and more spontaneous than in Brandt's polished cavalry canvases. Broad preliminary strokes establish light and shadow massing, with only selective areas — likely the central figure's face and drapery — worked to a higher degree of finish. The unresolved areas provide evidence of his compositional thinking, showing how the artist planned tonal structure before adding detail.