Faust and Margaretha

Painted in 1862 as a companion to Mephisto and sharing the Frans Buffa and Sons provenance, Faust and Margaretha depicts the central romantic relationship of Goethe's drama — the aged scholar transformed by Mephisto's pact pursuing the young innocent Margaretha. French audiences of 1862 would have associated the subject immediately with Gounod's opera, which had premiered three years earlier and was already transforming Faust into one of the defining romantic narratives of the era. Monticelli's pair of panels approaches the Faustian world not as a vehicle for Gothic terror or moral allegory but as an occasion for rich, atmospheric figure painting — the dramatic content is subordinated to the pleasure of colour, light, and the expressive surface of heavily worked paint on panel.

The companion panel to Mephisto uses the Faust-Margaretha pairing to introduce a colour contrast: the older, darker figure of Faust against the lighter, warmer tones associated with Margaretha. Monticelli builds up the figures from a dark ground, with the brightest passages — skin, costume highlights — laid in as thick, final strokes.