A Wounded Soldier Receives the Last Rites

In Catholic Vienna in 1834, the scene on this small panel was one everyone recognised. When a priest carried the sacrament to someone dying, a server went ahead with a lantern, and here the boy kneels beside it on the tiles. The priest, in a white surplice, bends over the chalice. The wounded man lies on a folding camp bed with a bandage round his head, his spurred boots beside him and his sword belt on the floor, while a comrade in a dark coat holds his shoulder. The museum's German title calls him an officer. Albert Schindler fitted a whole beamed corridor behind them, straw hanging from the rafters and a crucifix on the wall. The picture once belonged to the emperor's picture gallery and came to the Belvedere from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in 1921.