Christ Blessing the Children

In 1930 the Baroque Museum in the Lower Belvedere, opened only seven years earlier, was still filling its rooms, and this picture was one of that year's purchases, shown in an exhibition of new acquisitions. It came from Hugo Haberfeld, owner of the Galerie Miethke, a Vienna dealer that before the First World War had shown van Gogh and Klimt. In the Gospel story, mothers bring their children to Jesus, the disciples try to turn them away, and he tells them to let the children come. Franz Xaver Palko sets the scene on stone steps among columns. A small child leans into Christ's lap as he looks up to heaven, a woman in pink draws another child forward, and two bearded men watch from behind, one with his hand raised. The painting is on copper, 58 centimetres tall, and inscribed at lower right F.C. Palcko.