Epilogue (from the cycle Musica)

Musica is one of the most coherent cycles in the oeuvre of painter Josef Mánes. Ten large pen and wash drawings were predecessors of a planned but unspecified final artwork, probably a cycle of graphic sheets or hanging paintings. In the 1850s and 1860s, Josef Mánes often dealt with the theme of music, like he did in his designs of illustrations of folk songs. In his lithographic allegory Homeland from 1855-1856, Mánes highlighted musicality as a major component of the nation’s character and elaborated this idea in the general cycle of Musica. The axis of this large allegory is the course of life in the countryside. Its phases are represented by events and situations linked with certain musical disciplines or types of song. The scenes employ various facts of life and the costumes and accessories in the cycle are mostly based on the artist’s studies done in Slovakia. Analogously to the introductory sheet, in which the cycle’s contents is outlined by an allegory with a floating figure of a peasant girl and Muse on Pegasus, in the final sheet the direct depiction of life in the countryside is missing, too, and the motif of a band, consisting of putti and heading to a pub, is used.