On loan to The Met The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Portrait of Johanna Sophia Liebschern
Not on view
This print depicts the so-called Fusskünstlerin (foot artist) Johanna Sophia Liebschern, who may have been active in Buchinger’s native Nuremberg; she is noted as visiting in 1793. The engraved inscription below the portrait describes Liebschern as having been born in Claußnitz, in Saxony, and further that “she has no arms but is able to use knife, fork, and spoon with her left foot and feed herself, [and] is able to prettily write, sew, draw, cut a quill pen, load and shoot a pistol.” Much like Buchinger, Liebschern enjoyed considerable fame in her own time and was the subject of voyeuristic as well as scientific interest.
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