Marion Lenbach in Armour

Marion Lenbach was ten when her father painted her in a knight's armour, with helmet and sword, on a canvas almost one and a half metres tall. Born in January 1892, she was the elder daughter of Franz von Lenbach's first marriage, and after her parents divorced in 1896 she grew up with her father and his second wife, Lolo, in the family villa in Munich. Accounts of the family describe a girl with unusually pale blonde hair who took a lively interest in the studio and shared her father's taste for dressing up and staging. He painted her in 18th-century costume, in antique dress, and here in armour. The museum notes that his portraits of Marion and of her half-sister Gabriele circulated in large numbers of reproductions, so that the girls became public figures. The picture hangs in the villa's reception rooms on the first floor, rebuilt after war damage by 1952 and furnished again with original pieces in 1996, following old photographs.