This painting pays testimony to its author’s enthusiasm for the work of Richard Wagner. The title alludes to Die Walküre, the second of the four operas making up the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, composed by the German musician between 1848 and 1874 and inspired by German mythology and more particularly by the Icelandic sagas and the medieval epic poem Nibelungenlied.

The Valkyries are minor female deities who served Odin. Captained by the goddess Freyja, they were extremely beautiful and skilful warriors dressed in their cuirasses, silver helmets, shields and lances who rode their white steeds to collect the souls of the heroes fallen in the battle and take them to Valhalla (the great hall of the Norse gods) where they would wait to join Odin’s armies in the battle of the end of the world.

This painting represents Brynhildr—treated more as a romantic figure than a bellicose one—in the moment she begs mercy from an enraged Wotan (her father, representing the god Odin in Wagner’s opera), who has stripped her from her immortality after disobeying the order to take the warrior Siegfried, who Brynhildr had fallen in love with, to Valhalla.

The work ought to be ascribed to a realistic aesthetic which introduces a certain historicist sense. Markedly constructive, the composition shows the artist’s profound knowledge of the art of perspective, and uses light to increase the depth that provides great overall harmony to the painting.