Page - 200 - in Die Repräsentation der Habsburg-Lothringischen Dynastie in Musik, visuellen Medien und Architektur - 1618–1918

200 Sektion II: Herrscher, Staat, Nation of contextual concepts, ideas, symbolic presentation and attributes of the Slavic na- tions through articles and reviews of art works shown at the world’s fair of 1900 in Paris. In its own pavilion which was entirely covered with historical and allegorical images taken from Bosnian history, all made by the painter Alfons Mucha, Bosnia- Herzegovina was presented for the first time as a country which had just recently come under Austro-Hungarian reign. But as has been shown, Kobilca nourished these ideas already a year earlier, at least: Mucha visited Bosnia and Herzegovina dur- ing the period when Kobilca worked there on various commissions which were also connected with the presentation of Bosnian habits and traditions.47 Many thematic, compositional and symbolical reminiscences can be found between Koblica’s Slovenia Bows to Ljubljana and Mucha’s Allegory of Bosnia-Herzegovina (Fig. 6). He applied the same elements which Kobilca used, too: a beautiful female representative of the coun- try with down-cast eyes sitting on a throne decorated by flowers and surrounded by the people. The clothing of the figures shows simply-rendered pseudo-ethnographic folk costumes of the Balkans. The scene emphasizes Johann Gottfried Herder’s ste- reotype of the ‘peace-loving Slav’, showing an industrious group of people caring for animals and plants and staring out of the crowd beseechingly.48 By showcasing only (in the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina) what was considered as craft at the world exhibi- tion and by advertising that (Western) Europeans were in contrast commissioned for large-scale painting and architecture, Austria was further staging the Bosnians as a less civilized culture, while Mucha was placing the Bosnian Slavs in a historical con- text with other European nations to emphasize a Slavic connectivity.49 The programme concepts of both paintings are surprisingly similar. Mucha made his painting in 1900, Kobilca painted hers in 1903, even though she received the order for the painting in 1898, one year before Mucha. There is no direct proof that the painters exchanged their ideas, yet what needs to be regarded as extremely im- Figure 6: Alfons Mucha, Allegory of Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1900, tempera on canvas.