The knight and the Maiden

The Knight and the Virgin is a painting from 1897 by the Swedish painter Richard Bergh . It depicts a man in knight armor holding a young woman in a field full of withered dandelions . Ulf Linde has interpreted the painting as a commentary on the relationship between life and death, expressed with the dandelion balls as a symbol. It came into being during Bergh's time in Varberg and both models were Varbergians. The female model was 17-year-old Anna Friberg, who stood model two hours a day for one year for 75 øre per hour. The male model was the railway man Johan Wilhelm Pettersson. The painting is at the Thielska gallery in Stockholm. A sketch from 1894 can be found at the National Museum