Gemälde auf Spinnengewebe. Painting on Cobweb. Peinture sure toile d'araignée

Innsbruck. Cloth. Paper pastedown on buckram. Fine. Beautiful ethereal painting of Tyrolean boy rendered on material woven from actual cobweb. Exquisite, and scarce, with supposedly fewer than 100 paintings of this type (cobweb) paintings ever done. N.d., circa 1870s. The artwork is about 9 by 5 cm, in a frame, 13 by 10 cm and the outer folder is 15 by 12 cm. Also contained in the small folio is a sample of cobweb material. The painter, Franz Unterberger (1838-1902), was a well-known Austrian painter known for his traditional Tyrolean genre artwork. He retained local artisans to render his image on to the cobweb material.