Painting By Alois Schram (vienna 1864-1919), “maternity”

ALOIS SCHRAM (Vienna 1864-1919), “Maternity”, 1906
Oil on canvas, cm. 85 x 64.
Signed “A. Schram 1906” lower right.
The religious subject is reinterpreted by the Austrian artist in a version with a Pre-Raphaelite taste: the figures are wrapped in a very soft sfumato, which brings the flesh to life and immerses the characters in an atmosphere between the sacred and the fairytale. The Madonna is portrayed very young, almost an adolescent; although the ochre dress is freely inspired by 14th-century women's clothing, the girl has a modern, short and wavy hairstyle. With her left arm she holds the Child, depicted as plump and blond, while he tries to grasp with his little hand the bunch of daisies in Mary's right hand. The flower, the daisy, is a symbol of purity, associated with the immaculate conception. Drawing inspiration once again from medieval and Renaissance sacred representation, Schram places the figures in a hortus conclusus, a walled garden, symbol of Mary's virginity.

BIOGRAPHY
Alois Schram was born in Vienna in 1864. At fifteen he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, under the guidance of historical painters such as Joseph Matthias Trenkwald, Carl Wurzinger and Hans Makart. In 1881 he received a gold medal of merit from the Academy for his Composition; with a painting on a historical theme, depicting the Grand Duchess of Tuscany Bianca Cappello, he also won a prize for the most talented students from the same institution in 1887. The following year he graduated from the Academy with full marks, obtaining a two-year stipend to stay and refine his studies in Rome. Upon his return, Schram settled in the Viennese artistic circles as a portraitist and decorative painter, alternating this career with numerous trips to Europe and the Middle East, as evidenced by some orientalist paintings. In addition to numerous private commissions, the painter also worked in the public sector, such as the allegorical friezes he created for the Parliament building in Vienna between 1909 and 1911. Four years later he painted the canvases for the ceilings of some of the halls of the imposing Hofburg complex, the winter residence of the imperial family; in Italy he worked on the decorative apparatus of the Palazzo Vivante in Trieste. He died in his hometown in 1919.