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Max Klinger's "Ein Handschuh" (A Glove), 1881:

3. "Wünsche" (Yearnings)
Technique: Etching and aquatint, size of actual image: 28 x 10.7 cm.

Now we know. Klinger's alter ego picked up the glove, but he never handed it over to either of the women. Maybe he never intended to, or he was discouraged to approach. Since we don't know whom the glove belonged to, one might speculate if his downheartedness was due to the sense of competition with other admirers (in the case of the background woman) or the sense of a too demanding availability (in the case of the middle woman).

So, despair rules in the sleeping quarters of the artist. The candle is not lit, the landscape is a projection from within. The sacred, unpredictable object is placed not too far away, not too close. The tree - or is it four trees? - seems to grow out of the glove, like fingers, or four paths of destiny. The woman on the road stands at the foot of the mountain with its man-shaped vegetation, like the glove lies at the feet of the yearning artist, whose legs under the blanket form a mountainlike shape. So, is she the glove - or its owner?


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