Le sculpteur Jens Adolf Jerichau, mari de l'artiste

Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann painted this in the same year she married the man in it, the Danish sculptor Jens Adolf Jerichau, in 1846. The two had met in Rome, where she, born in Poland and trained in Dusseldorf, was making her way in a very male art world before she settled into a leading place in Danish painting. She keeps the attention on his hands, the real tools of a sculptor. One of them holds an engagement ring. Behind him, half in shadow, stands the clay for the work that was about to make his name, a muscular Hercules he was then modelling.