Lower Austrian Country Wedding

The two landmarks behind this crowd never stood side by side. The Höldrich mill is in Hinterbrühl, in the Vienna Woods, and the church with its tall tower is in Perchtoldsdorf, a few kilometres away. Waldmüller joined them into one setting, and the picture is also known as the Perchtoldsdorf Wedding. The museum reads it as staged, assembled from little episodes rather than recorded from a real day.

The bride and groom stand at the centre, a young couple flirting beside them. Musicians with fiddles and a double bass play from a platform under the tree. At the front, as if on the apron of a stage, children sit in two groups, one pair of boys busy with a cloth bundle. After passing through several Viennese collections, the panel came to the Belvedere in 1910, bequeathed by Leopoldine Stifft.