ITALIAN SCHOOL, CIRCA 1830

FAUST AND MEPHISTOPHELES DURING THE WALPURGIS NIGHT

ITALIAN SCHOOL, CIRCA 1830

Pen and ink with grey wash on paper
Sheet size: 12.5 × 19 cm / 4.9 × 7.5 in
With frame: 37 × 42.5 cm / 14.6 × 16.7 in

Wooden frame from the 1930s
Museum-style mount

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust stands as one of the most fundamental works of European culture at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It not only embodies the spirit of Romanticism, but also establishes an intellectual and artistic framework that would shape the entire century. At its core lies the tragic division of the human self, the relentless desire for absolute knowledge, and the painful awareness of its unattainability — themes that resonate deeply with the Romantic worldview.
Among the most vivid and visually charged episodes of the poem is the scene of the Walpurgis Night — a mystical sabbath in which the familiar order of the world collapses. It is this episode that appears to inspire the present drawing. In Goethe’s text, this realm is described as a space of illusion, hallucination, and spectral visions, where the boundaries between reality and imagination dissolve:

“The witches ride to the Brocken high,
The stubble is yellow, the green corn nigh…”

The artist does not seek a literal illustration of the passage. Instead, he conveys the overall atmosphere of nocturnal chaos, restless movement, and spiritual instability. The figures seem to emerge and vanish, stripped of clear individuality, echoing the Romantic conception of the Walpurgis Night as a realm where stable forms and meanings are suspended. Faust and Mephistopheles appear less as active protagonists than as witnesses moving through this disordered world.
Stylistically, the composition reveals the artist’s familiarity with the leading artistic currents of the early nineteenth century. The crowded arrangement of figures, dramatic contrasts of light and shadow, and the free, almost painterly construction of space recall the Romantic explorations of artists such as Eugène Delacroix or Karl Bryullov. At the same time, the restraint of the drawing and the clarity of its formal language point to an Italian interpretation of Romanticism, in which emotional intensity remains governed by structural coherence and philosophical depth.