Pieta Hanse Ticheho

The article discusses the painting Pietà by Hans Tichy, (1861–1925), a Moravian painter and one of the founding members of the Vienna Secession. In the work, dated 1888, he reacted to the rise of naturalism in contemporary sacred painting (Jules Bastien-Lepage, Jean Béraud, Fritz Uhde), which however in Central Europe combined the new naturalist elements with the traditional idealism of academic painting. Tichy was primarily influenced by the work of Munkácsy, in particular the Passion cycle Christ before Pilate – Golgotha – Ecce Homo: like Munkácsy he worked on monumentalising figures, the spatial design of the scene, appropriate positioning of minimised detail, complementary colour contrasts, and chiaroscuro effects. In terms of content, Tichy emphasised the female element and also stressed the association with the contemporary movement for women's rights, which developed in Vienna from the 1880s onwards under the leadership of Rosa Mayreder and the painter Tina Blau-Lang. Tichy was among their supporters, and also taught at the Kunstschule für Frauen und Mädchen in Vienna.