Horatio als Akt, aus _Hamlet und Horatio auf dem Kirchhof_ c. 1868

Victor Müller made this pencil sketch of a nude Horatio as a preparatory study for a painting based on a scene from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Here, the classical tradition is visible. Artists often turned to classical antiquity for inspiration, drawing on its visual codes, such as the nude male form, to represent universal ideas about humanity. Müller lived and worked in Germany during a time of growing national pride and cultural ambition. Artists found themselves caught between the desire to express German identity and the need to emulate classical models. Art institutions, like the Dusseldorf Academy, also played a role. They taught students to draw from life but emphasized idealized forms. This produced a kind of tension between the real and the ideal, visible in Müller’s sketch. To fully understand it, you would need to research both German art institutions of the time and German attitudes toward classical art.