Shadows

March is just around the corner and so is the new theme for the Monochrome Madness Challenge. This time the challenge was a shadow. Or shadows. Or something along those lines. I went for that last one, something along those lines. A statue in the shadows with the shadow.

This marble sculpture, Theseus Defeats the Centaur by Antonio Canova from 1875, is located on the grand staircase in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum. The museum is one of my favorite places to visit when I am in Vienna. It was opened around 1891 at the same time as the Naturhistorisches Museum, by Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary. The two museums have similar exteriors and face each other across Maria-Theresien-Platz. Both buildings were built between 1871 and 1891 according to plans drawn up by Gottfried Semper and Karl Freiherr von Hasenauer.

The museum’s primary collections are those of the Habsburgs, particularly from the portrait and armour collections of Ferdinand of Tirol, the collections of Emperor Rudolph II (the largest part of which is, however, scattered), and the collection of paintings of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm.

For more interesting monochrome images, I recommend a visit to Leanne Cole’s blog Leanne Cole PHOTOGRAPHY, where every Wednesday she hosts The Monochrome Madness Challenge.