Creative Commons License
Christmas Angel Bearing Scroll
Heinrich Mücke, a student and later a professor at the Düsseldorf Academy, was born in Breslau (present-day Wroclaw, Poland). Like Eduard Bendemann, he executed a number of important royal and ecclesiastical commissions for wall paintings. Mücke was known for his deliberately archaizing treatment of religious subjects, which was meant to invoke what was seen as the purer piety of an earlier Christianity. A faint inscription on the scroll, "Ehre sei Gott in den Höhen und Friede auf Erden" (Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth), identifies the subject of this drawing as the angel announcing the birth of Christ to the shepherds (Luke 2:14). William Walters kept this drawing in an album that contained many works on sacred themes.
Inscription
Provenance
Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object. Learn more about provenance at the Walters.
William T. Walters, Baltimore, 1870 (?) [mode of acquisition unknown]; Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1894, by inheritance; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.
Exhibitions
| 2010-2011 | German Drawings from the Walters Collection. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. |
Measurements
H: 9 5/16 x W: 7 1/2 in. (23.6 x 19.1 cm)
Credit Line
Acquired by William T. Walters
Location in Museum
Not on view
Accession Number
In libraries, galleries, museums, and archives, an accession number is a unique identifier assigned to each object in the collection.
In libraries, galleries, museums, and archives, an accession number is a unique identifier assigned to each object in the collection.
37.1376