Subterranean Jail for the Stage
Can I see it?
Not on view at present
Where is “Subterranean Jail for the Stage” now? Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland. Not on view at present. Checked September 29, 2026.
Cleveland, United States
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
- Checked
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
About the work
Trained as an architect, Abel Schlicht also designed stage sets for the Mannheim National Theater. An important forum for German cultural identity, the theater was one of the first companies to produce exclusively German-language plays, including those by beloved playwright Friedrich Schiller. Prisons were an especially popular drama subject in the 1700s, and sets would have featured in multiple productions. Here, Schlicht employed aquatint to render the gloomy space of one of his prison scenes. This technique enabled the artist to create the range of tones used to illuminate the background and plunge the foreground into darkness.
The Cleveland Museum of Art
Details
- Accession number
- 2003.23
In the catalog
Sources
- The Cleveland Museum of Art
- Image: The Cleveland Museum of Art — Museum open access
