In the very Catholic and very conservative Austria of 1815, sublimated love songs to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, were an acceptable substitute for love songs for flesh-and-blood women. Schubert's Das Bild (The Picture) (D. 155) of February 11, 1815, is such a sublimated love song or at least the anonymous poem Schubert sets is such a sublimated love song. With images of "A maiden who stands and moves with heaven's charming grace...the form of a seraph, at the altar where I pray" the poem seems to be describing an angelic vision of the Virgin Mother herself. But thank heaven Schubert's music translates the transcendental to a more earthly level. Setting the three poem's verses as a strophic song, Schubert's Das Bild moves in a sensual triple time somewhere between a waltz and a Ländler. The vocal melody slips and slides lubriciously with gentle caresses and the piano accompaniment's arpeggios ebb and flow with lascivious curls of the fingers. But most licentious of all is the piano's postlude with its final upward scale in sensuous sixths. Schubert's Das Bild may be a sublimated love song, but the music reveals the hot blood beneath the cool surface.

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