Lot 1551 Dα

With a handwritten label to the reverse of the frame: "Kaiser Karl trauernd bei seiner verstorbenen Gemahlin Fastrade (siehe Grimms deutsche Sagen) von Adolph Ehrhardt Professor an der Königl Akademie der Künste in Dresden. Das Bild darf nicht aus dem Schutzrahmen genommen werden." (Emperor Charlemagne mourning his wife Fastrade (see Grimm's German Legends) by Adolph Ehrhardt, Professor at the Royal Academy of Arts in Dresden. The painting must not be removed from the protective frame.)
Ehrhardt, who studied at the Academies of Berlin and Düsseldorf and was a close friend of Eduard Bendemann mainly painted highly detailed religious and mundane history paintings.
This large scale work is inspired by a legend that was included by the Brothers Grimm in the second volume of the " Deutsche Sagen". It tells of a magic ring which Fastrada was given by her husband, which apparently bound the king so closely to its wearer that he refused to allow her body to be buried. Fastrada, the fourth wife of Charlemagne, died in 794 during a synod in Frankfurt, and was eventually laid to rest in the Abbey of Saint Alban near Mainz.