Art and revolution: painter Constantin Daniel Rosenthal

The painter and revolutionary Constantin Daniel Rosenthal is the artist - symbol of the Romanian 1848 revolution in Wallachia. His works were included in the Romanian history textbooks and many generations studied history admiring his works. Two of his paintings are best known: 'Romania breaking its chains on Câmpia Libertății' from 1848 and 'Revolutionary Romania' from 1850. These paintings had a powerful impact on the modern idea regarding the creation of the Romanian state and nation.

Constantin Daniel Rosenthal, who strongly believed in Romania's national aspirations, and eventually became a Romanian citizen, was actually born in 1820 in Pest, Hungary, into a family of Jewish merchants who spoke Hungarian and German. He died at only 31, in a prison from Pest, as he was arrested by the Austrian authorities and accused of espionage and instigation to revolutionary activity. Constantin Daniel Rosenthal studied art in Vienna and grew attached to radical revolutionary ideas. According to art critics, Rosenthal came to Bucharest around 1842, for unknown reasons. It seems that, in Vienna, he became friends with the Romanian painter Ioan Negulici, himself a future active participant in the 1848 revolution in Bucharest. While in Bucharest, he was regularly attending the Romanian radical revolutionary circles represented by C.A. Rosetti's Francophile Liberals.

Rosenthal's most important contribution to the Romanian revolution consists in the two aforementioned paintings. The woman who posed for Rosenthal was the famous Mary Grant, of Scottish origin, who later became Maria Rosetti after her marriage with C.A.Rosetti. An overwhelmingly energetic person, Maria Rosetti personalized Romania's beauty and determination to build a new destiny. Dressed in an embroidered Romanian blouse, wearing a necklace made of yellow princely coins that contrasted with her white skin, with a head scarf made of raw silk covering her dark, shiny hair and holding a tricolor flag in her hands, Maria Rosetti as the symbol of revolutionary Romania was part of the epoch iconography, when a young woman embodied political and social ideals. Art historian Adrian-Silvan Ionescu summed up Rosenthal's contribution to the artistic representation of Romania's 1848 revolutionary ideas.

"From the point of view of his patriotic feelings, Rosenthal impeccably illustrated this Romanian movement by painting 'Romania breaking its chains on Câmpia Libertății'. Later, a lithography was made after this painting. It is a small-size work and its lithography was popularized and distributed to the masses at large, contributing to the dissemination of revolutionary ideas. Afterwards, Rosenthal painted Maria Rosetti, a Scottish woman. It is quite amusing to see that Romania was represented by a Scottish woman, but she had a Romanian soul, being married to C.A. Rosetti."

Bucharest, like any changing city, especially in the first half of the 19th century, was in full effervescence. A predominantly Oriental city before 1800, without any notable public fora, Bucharest was commonly perceived by travelers as a marginal city in terms of living standards and quality of life. In the former Vornicei Market Square, today the venue of the Art Collections Museum on Victory Road, a statue devoted to Liberated Romania, designed by Constantin Daniel Rosenthal, was raised on June 23, 1848. The "Pruncul român" (Romanian Infant) journal described the statue as follows: "the monument depicted a gowned woman crowned with a wreath of laurel leaves. Her tressy locks sprawling over her shoulders, the woman still bears her broken chains on her wrists, in one hand holding a long cross and the scales in the other, both symbols of faith and justice. She is trampling on the snake, representing her enemies".

In the aforementioned journal, C.A. Rosetti spoke about the tearing down of the statue: "the statue depicted Liberated Romania, with the symbols of justice and Christianity, the cross and the scales, standing in Vornicei Square, has been teared down under orders from Mr. Emanoil Băleanu, who accompanied this act of vandalism with such villainous and reprobate words that we dare not smear our paper with. The basement of the statue was also destroyed, with no respect for the property". Adrian-Silvan Ionescu is back on the microphone:

"Few people know Rosenthal was the first public sculptor in Romania. He created the Statue of Liberty held up in Vornicei Square on the present-day Victory Road, a statue he built using perishable raw materials, from plaster. The moment the interim Government fled to Transylvania, fearing the Ottoman invasion, the statue was brought down by the opposition. The statue stood high for no more than a few weeks. Rosenthal's statute was featured a year after the revolution, in 1849, in the Leipzig-based "Illustrirte Zeitung" magazine, most likely drawing on one of Rosenthal's sketches. He was fluent in German, one of his uncles was running a German-language magazine in Buda. He was well-connected to the European publishers and cultural figures. He loved his art and was an avid learner of human physiognomy and psychology, a keen observer of Romanian identity. Moreover, he wanted to be Romanian, he considered himself Romanian, although he didn't speak the language. Rosenthal was a Romanian not because he obtained the Romanian citizenship, but due to his works".

Constantin Daniel Rosenthal was the Jew, the Hungarian and the Romanian who lived his life to the fullest according to the principles, values and ideologies of his time, which he sought to represent as best he could. The 1848 Revolution was undoubtedly a central moment in his life.

(translated by L. Simion & V. Palcu)