On Corpus Christi Morning

Radiant with happiness, the boy with the Corpus Christi candle turns around once more. The scene is overflowing with light. It precisely outlines the figure of the boy, shimmers and glitters across the girls in their finery, while at the same time isolating the three children in the foreground. Everything shines in anticipation of the procession. But some of the children will not be joining—neither the kneeling girl holding out a wreath of flowers to the boy leading the way, nor the other children. They are barefoot and wear their ordinary clothes. It is a moving scene. Any form of direct criticism of social ills, in this case the poverty of broad swaths of society, was generally far from the minds of Waldmüller and his contemporaries.

Credit: Leihgabe des Vereins der Freunde der Österreichischen Galerie Belvedere