Faun and Mermaid
by STUCK, Franz von, Oil on canvas, 157 x 62 cm
In this picture, Stuck brings together a faun, a hybrid of man and billy goat, and a creature from the sea. The forest spirit caringly carries the water maiden, equipped with flippers, through the knee-deep water. The water is the reason for the piggyback situation, and we see a high-spirited, vital game on the seashore, devised with human models.
Like other successful pictorial inventions, Franz von Stuck took up the motif again much later in a bronze statuette.