A girl with a cloth draped around her hips ties the ribbons of her sandal. The only ornamentation on her lightly angled head is the elaborately braided bun.
The Girl Tying her Sandal is Shadow’s most well-known sculpture. He sculpted it five times in Carrara Marble (today: Munich, Neue Pinakothek; South Carolina, Middleton Palace; privately owned). It was also reproduced in porcelain and as a copper engraving (16). A poem has also been dedicated to it. The Girl Tying her Sandal also features prominently in the friendship picture painted by his brother Wilhelm Schadow, which depicts the Schadow brothers and the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (6). The work has also been immortalised as a relief on Ridolfo Schadow’s tomb (5).
The motif, in which a foot is laid on the knee of the other leg, is reminiscent of the pose from an antique bronze sculpture, the Thorn Remover (1st century BC), which has been documented in Rome since the 12th century. Contemporary works also provided inspiration for Schadow’s sculpture. In Rome in 1810, the sculptor Christian Daniel Rauch (1777-1857) sculpted a portrait of the ten year old daughter of the von Humboldt couple as seated mythological figure (Adelheid von Humboldt as Psyche, marble execution: 1826, Berlin, Tegel palace).
Sylva van der Heyden
