Madonna

In 1937 the Nazis stripped German museums of the modern art they branded degenerate, and the Hamburger Kunsthalle lost many of its modern works. In 1956 the city of Hamburg and a group of its art lovers set up a foundation to start buying for its museums again, and in 1957 it acquired this Madonna. It has hung in the Kunsthalle on permanent loan ever since. Munch painted it between 1893 and 1895 and never settled on one name for it. At its first showings it was called Loving Woman, or simply Love. The woman's eyes are closed, one arm is raised behind her head, and her long dark hair falls over her shoulder. Above her head runs a band of red that the museum reads as a halo, which ties her to the Virgin of the title.