Gradiva 2025 (oil on board)
A tip of the hat to Andre Masson (1939). Gradiva, 'she who walks' is found on a Roman relief and was the subject and title of a German novel by Wilhelm Jensen (1902) and psychoanalytic study. Hence Freud's eyeglasses in the painting.
Four months after he published his essay on Gradiva and Jensen’s story, Sigmund Freud visited Rome and during the trip he went to see the bas-relief representing Gradiva at the museum of the Vatican, the very same one that had inspired Jensen to write his story. Just as Norbert Hanold, the character in Jensen’s story had done, Freud bought a copy of the bas-relief of Gradiva and hung it in his office in Vienna, at the foot of his divan. There it remained until he left Vienna, and took it with him to London in 1938, where it can be found on the wall of his London study which forms part of the Freud Museum.


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