Helene Sedlmayr: The most beautiful woman in Munich now has a price

by time news

2023-05-23 12:55:56

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The most beautiful woman in Munich now has a prize

Helene Sedlmayr painted by Joseph Karl Stieler

Helene Sedlmayr painted by Joseph Karl Stieler

Source: Grisebach GmbH

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Ludwig I of Bavaria was considered a popular monarch until he fell over an affair with a dancer. His passion for “beauties” can be seen in Nymphenburg Palace. A favorite motif of the king is now being auctioned off.

MMunich is beautiful. A bit of Florence, a bit of the Acropolis, a bit of Oktoberfest. The city owes this to Ludwig I, the Bavarian king, who, together with his master builders Leo von Klenze and Friedrich von Gärtner, built a classical high office for urbanity.

He thought big and paid homage to antiquity with the Glyptothek. As a king, he was also radical, of course, and had a boulevard built in front of the city gates leading to nowhere. Lined with parade buildings, it flows into a magnificent Siegestor, behind which a rural idyll opens up, shockingly seamless.

When Ludwig I was enthroned in 1825, he had already distinguished himself as a builder with great urban planning ambitions. Inspired by his trips to Italy in 1818, for example to the artists of German Romanticism, the German Romans, who had followed the never-ending attraction of the Eternal City.

Ludwig I of Bavaria, copy after Joseph Karl Stieler

Ludwig I of Bavaria, copy after Joseph Karl Stieler

What: akg

He was a Philhellene of the purest water. For example, he maneuvered his hapless second son Otto to the Greek throne after the fight for freedom. In addition, Ludwig was a rigorously historicizing romantic and a steadfast lover of the arts.

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Helmut Berger (1944-2023), in

The initially moderately liberal monarch, who later became reactionary in the revolutionary climate, cultivated a kind of feudal popularity. His wedding, when he was still crown prince, was accompanied by a horse race open to everyone, including a beer bar (cultivated to this day as the Oktoberfest, but without horse races).

His increasingly absolutist attitude in later years, (beer) and other price increases, and the hysterical Lola Montez (an Irish dancer), from which Ludwig would not let go, brought the population against him. For decades she had admired the eccentric, who, by the way, devotedly wrote miserable poems, because he knew how to pacify any unrest, even if it was with free beer. But finally, in March 1848, he had to bow to the pressure and resign.

Portrait of Lola Montez in the Gallery of Beauties at Nymphenburg Palace

Portrait of Lola Montez in the Gallery of Beauties at Nymphenburg Palace

Those: De Agostini via Getty Images

Because Ludwig I was fond of beauty in general and beautiful women in particular throughout his life, he decided, following the example of French and Russian noble houses, that the House of Wittelsbach would also do well to have a “beauty gallery”: He commissioned his court painter Joseph Karl Stieler, a gifted and experienced portraitists to paint portraits of society ladies and – a special aspect of the Wittelsbach “beauty gallery” – of commoners who at least temporarily belonged to the royal environment.

38 portraits were created between 1827 and 1850. Today they now hang together in Nymphenburg Palace. The fine ladies-in-waiting and wives of the high-born next to simple citizens, the mistresses like the English actress Jane Elizabeth Digby and the confidant Marianna Marchesa Florenzi next to that scandalous noodle Lola Montez. But the most beautiful and famous among Munich’s beautiful women is forever and ever: Helene Sedlmayr.

The daughter of a master shoemaker from Trostberg was employed for simple jobs and errands in a toy shop near the Residenz in Munich. So one day she ran into her king during an extradition for the king’s children – and he took a liking to her (as they always say in the beautiful old tales). Ludwig I had them decked out with a silver embroidered bonnet, silver bodice chains, a silk handkerchief and whatever else is needed for an old Munich festive robe.

Joseph Karl Stieler's portrait of

Joseph Karl Stieler’s portrait of “Helene Sedlmayr” will be auctioned at Grisebach on June 1, 2023

Source: Grisebach GmbH

Stieler got to work. Helene was just 18 years old when it was completed in 1831. Ludwig I ensured an adequate marriage, married her to Hermes Miller, one of his valet, in 1832, and in the same year she had her first of ten children. The connection between the two was apparently happy and the connection to the House of Wittelsbach was more or less enduring: King Ludwig and his strong-willed wife Therese registered as christening witnesses for some of Helene’s and Hermes’ children.

Contrary to his usual nature, the king could be very generous. Right away when it came to matters of art and the heart. So he commissioned Stieler to make two slightly different replicas of the portrait, almost the same size, and gave one of them to Helene (the whereabouts of the second replica are unknown). Their descendants have honored the work of art to this day.

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The Paulskirche parliament in 1848

It now became the Miller family at the auction house Grisebach in Berlin delivered. Anyone who wants to bring home the delicate beauty with the dreamy look and the mystery that will never be resolved, the fairytale rencontre with the king of Bavaria – perhaps as a basis for their own small “beauty gallery” – should first take a look at the estimate of 80,000 up to 120,000 euros.

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