The portrait of Liszt as an allegory of the artist in Ary Scheffer’s Three Magi

Kovács, Imre (2008) The portrait of Liszt as an allegory of the artist in Ary Scheffer’s Three Magi. Studia Musicologica, 49 (1-2). pp. 91-104. ISSN 1788-6244

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Abstract

This study examines an allegorical painting by Ary Scheffer, the Three Magi , which represents Liszt posing in the guise of the youngest king, depicted in a sentimental manner. It explores the intellectual background of the picture, the meaning and the reasons behind this peculiar role-play. By identifying the portrait of Liszt with one of the three kings, Scheffer promoted the Artist to a rank that was only attainable by the Biblical kings and the monarchs of this world looking for a model of identification in them through their portraits. The painter wished to provide a pictorial form to the ideal Artist as imagined by Liszt, thus creating the spiritual portrait of the musician desiring to theoretically define himself as an artist. For this reason the painter historicized the representational type of the character of the inspired artist and ingeniously associated it with the iconographic type of the Three Magi . The Three Magi thus becoming a framework-topic, emerged as a metaphor of the concept of the Artist of the age.

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