The Drowsy One

Friedrich von Amerling was the portraitist Vienna's wealthy families wanted in the middle of the 19th century, the man who painted emperors and countesses in silk. This is something quieter. Instead of a named sitter in her finery, it shows a young woman half asleep, caught in an ordinary drowsy moment. Pictures like this belong to the Biedermeier mood of the Austrian empire after 1815, when a cautious middle class turned away from grand public subjects toward calm domestic life, small rooms and honest everyday feeling. Amerling gives the girl the same soft, glowing skin he lavished on his paying clients. The painting is now in the Uffizi in Florence.