Goldenes Zeitalter II

'Goldenes Zeitalter II' (Golden Age II), painted in 1880 on panel and held in the Bavarian State Painting Collections, is the companion piece to 'Golden Age I' from the same year, the two works forming part of von Marées's sustained meditation on the classical Arcadian vision in the final productive decade of his life. The repetition — two versions of the same subject in the same year — reflects his characteristic working method of returning repeatedly to the same formal problem, adjusting the composition's figures and spatial organisation with each iteration. Unlike a preparatory study and finished work, these are more nearly equal explorations of the same formal territory from different angles. The panel support for both works signals a considered technical choice, aligning the works with the German Renaissance tradition (Dürer, Cranach, Altdorfer) that also deployed panel for mythological subjects.

Like its companion, Goldenes Zeitalter II employs a panel support and a warm, harmonised palette to present figures in a shallow landscape space. Von Marées makes compositional variations — different figure groupings, altered spatial relationships — while maintaining the overall formal approach established in the first version. The paint handling is dense and worked, with the warm depth built through extensive layering.