Gabriel von Max
Abelard and Heloise (Abelard und Heloise)
after 1900
Oil on canvas
41 x 36 cm
Signed upper right: G. v. Max
Inscribed upper left: Abelard u. Heloise
Conserved by Andrea Rothe (formerly, Getty Museum) and Jeanne McKee-Rothe (formerly, Norton Simon Museum).
Since October, 2015, on long-term loan to The Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York. The loan of “Abelard and Heloise,” dating from the last phase of von Max’s career, complements and contextualizes the Memorial Art Gallery’s relatively recent acquisition of a seminal work from the beginning of von Max’s career, “The Martyrdom of St. Ludmilla,” painted in 1864 (see http://magart.rochester.edu/Obj25838?sid=3137&x=186968).
The title of the painting is, of course, a reference to history’s famous star-crossed lovers of the Middle Ages, Peter Abélard and Héloïse d’Argenteuil.
