Copper wall plaque Beethoven profile relief 19th century

Oval wall plaque of repoussé copper showing the profile of Ludwig van Beethoven in relief, turned to the left. The head shows the full, swept-back hair, the heavy brow and the tense mouth that shape the nineteenth-century image of the composer, carried by a high collar with cravat. The image is pushed out from the sheet metal in repoussé, so that the reverse reveals the hollow negative of the portrait. A soldered loop at the top edge allows the plaque to be hung.

Relief portraits of Beethoven were produced in numbers from the middle of the nineteenth century as wall decoration, at a time when the composer had become the emblem of romantic artisthood. The worked copper has taken on a warm, dark patina over time, deeper in the recesses and brighter on the raised passages. The profile follows the iconography descending from the life masks and busts made in Beethoven's own day, in which the high forehead and the wild mass of hair became the fixed marks of his likeness.