Lucretia (Baldung)

Lucretia or Aschaffenburg Madonna with a Dagger (German: Aschaffenburger Dolchmadonna) is a 16th-century painting by Hans Baldung.[1] It shows Lucretia committing suicide, but for 150 years was venerated as a Madonna in the collegiate church in Aschaffenburg.

Lucretia

It was probably originally in the collection of Albert of Brandenburg, his immediate predecessor or his immediate successor. During the Protestant Reformation the work was one of many works in the state of Brandenburg to enter the Aschaffenburg's 'Kunstkammer' (city art collection). Around 1720 it was loaned to the collegiate church during the restoration of churches in the Electorate of Mainz. It seems to have been assumed that the painting had once been in Halle Cathedral and was therefore assigned to a church treasury. An inventory of the collegiate church dating to around 1735 mentions the work as Madonna with the Dagger and as being placed on an altar on the north side of the church. A later inventory mentions it in a side aisle "with an innocent look, as she bleeds from the heart". It was returned to the Kunstkammer just before 1870 and now forms part of the Bavarian State Painting Collections.

See also

References
  1. (in German) Katalog der Staatsgemäldesammlung Aschaffenburg, Direktion der bayerischen Staatsgemäldesammlungen, München 1933
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