Ein Jüngling umarmt eine Sphinx 

Curator: This drawing, housed here at the Städel Museum, is titled "Ein Jüngling umarmt eine Sphinx," depicting a youth embracing a sphinx, rendered with pencil on paper. It is thought to be by Victor Müller, dating from the Romantic period. Editor: My immediate reaction is that there's an unresolved tension. The light pencil strokes create a sense of fragility and incompleteness. It makes the mythological subject feel much more human and vulnerable. Curator: The choice of pencil as a medium is interesting. It allowed Müller a directness and ease of revision, revealing the evolution of his idea, rather than presenting a finished, finalized piece. We see through the spontaneous sketching, right into the working process. Editor: And think about the imagery itself: the sphinx, often a symbol of mystery and perilous knowledge. The embrace suggests an almost Oedipal confrontation with fate or self-knowledge. The youth clinging to the beast seems a physical representation of wrestling with difficult truths. Curator: Precisely, there's a negotiation with both myth and tradition here. Note also the paper itself, and its condition. Those marks and imperfections speak to its history as a material object, surviving through time, exposed to light, and shifts in humidity and touch of many hands. Editor: That damage, you mean? It could deepen our understanding, actually. Think of it as further layering meaning. Decay, damage... could that embody an allegory for history and the fading nature of cultures and knowledge? The visual symbols begin to degrade before us. Curator: Indeed. While an art restorer might view it as damage, the paper’s visible history offers a counterpoint to the romanticism so in fashion at the time of its creation. Romantic art production wasn't simply the grand idea, but this laborious handwork with limited means, that can so readily fade. Editor: I am more compelled to see past its physical degradation; ultimately I think this sketch evokes a sense of introspection. Its fragile aesthetic reveals something profound about confronting enigmas, mortality, and humanity's continuous grappling with symbolism and truth. Curator: Yes, a powerful piece of ephemera in pencil and paper; one can examine material process to shed new light on our psychological reading of enduring visual tropes. Editor: For me, its symbolic message endures across eras: to know thyself might very well demand an embrace of all of one’s fearsome mysteries.