Equality in action
In 1796, one of Rahel Levin’s admirers commissioned the sculptor Christian Friedrich Tieck to create a relief of her as a 25 year old. In 1835, two years after her death, her husband Karl August Varnhagen had a series of copies made, most in plaster and a few in bronze. He gave them away as mementos. The classical style of Tieck’s relief portrait is subverted by the position of Rahel’s head and breast, turned in slightly different directions, and by the lively depiction of her face, which lends the ancient form a distinct individuality and vitality.