memento mori – Remember that you must die

Thoma’s Self-Portrait with Cupid and Death also has a renowned model in Böcklin’s oeuvre – his 1872 Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle, today in Berlin’s Alte Nationalgalerie. In this work, Böcklin presents himself as an artist holding a brush and a palette. An eerie skeleton nestles up behind him playing a tune on a one-string fiddle.

This image locates Böcklin’s painting in the tradition of the medieval Dance of Death, a genre where a skeleton dancing and playing music symbolises death’s influence and power over people’s lives.

In Böcklin’s self-portrait, the pensive artist is reminded of his own mortality by the skeleton’s incessant tune played on the fiddle, a vanitas symbol known by the Latin phrase “memento mori” – “Remember that you must die”.

Vita brevis, ars longa – Life is short, art is long

Three years later, Thoma adapted a similar idea for this work. However, the changes he added also altered its overall message.

Although he similarly identifies himself as an artist by the paint brush in his hand, the skeleton behind him is not playing a fiddle. Instead, dressed in an artist’s white smock and with its head crowned by a laurel wreath, it seems to be whispering in Thoma’s ear while he appears to pause for a moment to consider what it says. In contrast to Böcklin’s self-portrait, the skeleton here does not seem unduly frightening to the artist.

This difference is also rooted in the changes to the picture’s symbolism. Rather than Thoma’s self-portrait solely addressing his own mortality and the transient nature of his life, it equally evokes – as suggested by the laurel wreath – the artist’s fame continuing posthumously. Moreover, with his hand seemingly held protectively over Thoma’s head, the Cupid figure in the upper right-hand corner also mutes the horror of death.

amor vincit omnia – Love conquers all

Cupid’s presence softens the prevailing drama still evident in Böcklin’s painting, transforming the menacing memento mori symbolism into amor vincit omnia (“love conquers all”).

Thoma’s expression of artistic self-confidence in this work is quite remarkable. After all, when he painted this self-portrait, he was a young and not overly successful artist. Moreover, he was facing considerable criticism in Munich as well, in those days one of Europe’s leading centres of the arts.

His poise and self-assurance may thus have been inspired more by personal happiness than professional success – and indeed the year Thoma painted this work he met his future wife Cella Berteneder. A young woman working as a model in Munich, she later took painting lessons with Thoma. His relationship with Cella gave him an inner security and confidence. Just two years later, Hans Thoma married Cella, then 19 years old. Given that Thoma often painted portraits of his wife, some critics have claimed the little Cupid also has her features.

After completing this painting Thoma gave it to one of his close friends, the painter Louis Eysen, who then left it to Thoma in his will. In 1910, Thoma donated his self-portrait to the Kunsthalle.