The Five Senses: Hearing

Baron Joseph Alexander von Helfert, a historian and politician, ordered this series for his apartment on the Parkring, one of the smart addresses on Vienna's new Ringstrasse. The canvas is more than three metres high and only 70 centimetres wide, because each of the five panels was meant to fill the gap between two windows. Makart gave every sense a nude woman, and the Belvedere points out that the five figures read as one body turning, view by view. For Hearing she stands in profile against tall dark leaves and a strip of blue sky, one hand raised behind her ear. The picture is dated between 1872 and 1879 and carries his monogram, H. M. The series never reached the baron's walls, and this panel came to the museum in 1901 from Miethke, a Viennese art dealer.