Death and the Maiden

Death and the Maiden, completed in 1915 and held at the Belvedere in Vienna, is one of Schiele's most psychologically charged and autobiographically resonant large-scale canvases. The work was begun as an image of the artist with his companion Wally Neuzil at the moment when their relationship was ending: Schiele was preparing to marry Edith Harms, and the 'maiden' figure is recognisably Wally while the hooded 'death' figure represents Schiele himself. The traditional Totentanz (dance of death) subject — in which Death claims individuals from all walks of life — is here transformed into a personal meditation on the end of a relationship, the moral weight of abandonment, and the entanglement of love and loss. Schiele proposed to Wally that they meet once a year after his marriage; she declined and enlisted as a Red Cross nurse, dying of scarlet fever in 1917. The Belvedere's ownership of this masterwork, one of the most important Expressionist paintings in any collection, reflects its status as an irreplaceable document of Viennese modernist anguish.

Large oil on canvas with complex figure handling across the intertwined forms. The figures occupy almost the entire canvas surface against a bed of pale, earth-toned material. Schiele's brushwork ranges from precise facial and hand rendering to more gestural treatment of the crumpled fabric beneath.