Cleveland Museum of Art

Brünnhilde in Twilight of the Gods

Odilon Redon

Date

1894

Medium

lithograph

Culture

France, 19th century

Department

Prints

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

This print shows Odilon Redon’s passion for the music of 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner. Brünnhilde is a main character in the final chapter of Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung, an epic four-part operatic piece composed over several decades. Created after Redon’s extensive experimentation with and mastery of lithography, the print reveals the medium’s similarity to drawing in the range of marks used to sketch its subject. Redon delicately outlined flowers in the background and crosshatched to highlight Brünnhilde’s face before turning his crayon on its side to darken her hair and chest. This is the second lithograph Redon created depicting Brünnhilde. The first was published in the journal la Revue wagnérienne and shows her as a fierce warrior with a helmet, shield, and armor.

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