Moritz Daniel Oppenheim was a German painter who is often regarded as the first Jewish painter of the modern era. His work was influenced by his cultural and religious roots at a time when many of his German Jewish contemporaries chose to convert to Christianity.
Oppenheim was born to Jewish parents at Hanau, Germany in 1800. He received his first lessons in painting from Conrad Westermayr, in Hanau, and entered the Munich Academy of Arts at the age of seventeen. Later he visited Paris, where Jean-Baptiste Regnault became his teacher, and then went to Rome, where he studied with Bertel Thorwaldsen, Barthold Georg Niebuhr, and Johann Friedrich Overbeck. There he studied the life of the Jewish ghetto and made sketches of the various phases of its domestic and religious life, in preparation for several large canvases which he painted upon his return to Germany. In 1825 he settled at Frankfurt, and shortly after exhibited his painting David Playing Before Saul, to see which a great number of admirers from all parts of Europe visited his studio. In 1832, at the instance of Goethe, Charles Frederick, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach conferred upon him the honorary title of professor. Oppenheim was commissioned to paint several portraits of prominent members of the Rothschild banking dynasty.
The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara is one of the most important paintings by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim to have come to auction in many years. It was painted in 1862, four years after the incident depicted in the painting occurred in Bologna, Italy.
On June 24, 1858, six year old Edgardo Mortara was forcibly removed from his parent’s home by the guards of the Papal Inquisition in Bologna. He had apparently been secretly baptized some years earlier by a serving girl, Anna Morisi, during a childhood illness. Despite the strenuous efforts of the child’s parents, who worked tirelessly to rally support from the Jewish community across Europe as well as from distinguished figures throughout Europe; despite protests from the Rothschild family and the intervention of Sir Moses Montefiore himself; despite the disapproval of the French king Napoleon III, the boy was never returned to his family.
The Return of the Volunteer is Oppenheim's most overtly political painting in the cycle. It affirms the patriotism of German Jews and addresses the question of their assimilation. The work portrays a soldier who has returned home from the War of Liberation against Napoleon. In his haste to be reunited with his family, he has traveled on the Sabbath, contrary to Jewish law.
Hundreds of German Jewish volunteers fought against Napoleon's forces. Ironically, after the French were defeated, the Jewish people lost many of the civil rights they had gained under the French occupation.
This cache:
The cache is on the street near the small garden; more info in hint.
The street is not busy; but please use some amount of stealth as for the cache to remain secure.