Fruits on Red

This is painted on a handkerchief. When Klee played the violin, and he played well, he tucked a red silk cloth under his chin to protect the instrument, a violin built in Milan in 1721 by Carlo Antonio Testore. In 1930, teaching at the Bauhaus in Dessau, he mounted that worn cloth on blue cardboard and gave the picture a second title, the Violinist's Sweat-Cloth, a dry joke on the sacred word for Veronica's veil. On the silk, tuning forks branch into little trees carrying round blossoms and fruit. The fruit and leaves are scraps of silk cut out and glued down, the stems drawn with a fine brush or pen, and a compass helped with the circles. A musical clef sits at the right edge. Klee marked the sheet Sonderklasse, special class, the rating he kept for the works he valued most.