Portrait of Miss Waerndorfer 1913

Egon Schiele sketched "Portrait of Miss Waerndorfer," with ink and watercolor, capturing the sitter in a polka-dot dress. These repeated circles and the strategic placement of bows are not mere decoration but motifs resonating with deeper symbolic undercurrents. Throughout art history, the circle has appeared as a symbol of wholeness, the infinite, and the cyclical nature of life. Here, the red circles may invoke notions of vitality and passion, clashing intriguingly with the subject’s melancholic gaze. The bows, traditionally symbols of connection and union, are here perhaps ironic, contrasting with the sitter's detached expression. These motifs find echoes in earlier works, such as Botticelli's "Primavera," where floral patterns evoke themes of fertility. In Schiele’s portrait, however, the motifs seem to be imbued with a modern sense of alienation. This use of inherited forms, charged with new psychological meaning, reflects our enduring fascination with symbols, and how artists continuously reinvent them to express the complex emotional states of their time.