Detail of Faust and Marguerite by Leys in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, January 2012

Faust and Marguerite

Hendrik Jan August Leys, Belgian, 1815 - 1869

Geography: Made in Antwerp, Belgium, Europe

Date: 1856

Medium: Oil on panel

Dimensions: 39 1/4 x 69 3/4 inches (99.7 x 177.2 cm)

Curatorial Department: European Painting before 1900, Johnson Collection

Object Location: Gallery 155, European Art 1850-1900, first floor (Annenberg Galleries)

Accession Number: E1924-3-83

Credit Line: The William L. Elkins Collection, 1924

Label:
This painting shows a moment in Goethe's dramatic poem Faust.

Faust stands with the demonic Mephistopheles behind an iron screen, and he first spies the chaste Marguerite emerging from a church. Faust demands that Mephistopheles secure Marguerite's love for him. Leys has followed Goethe's description in his depiction of Marguerite as a young woman of modest or lower social standing with red lips, glowing cheeks, and downcast eyes.

Like many nineteenth-century artists, Leys was interested in the Middle Ages. Here he dresses the characters in medieval costume and sets the scene at a medieval cathedral in Antwerp, Belgium.

Text from: www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/102947.html?mulR=28282219|7