Boys in art. The artist and his model: Ferdinand and Hector Hodler. A new approach.

In literature serious attention is rarely paid to the theme of "the boy in art," although many artists used and still use boys as a medium for their message. By a detailed analysis of the symbolism in a series of paintings by Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918), the author attempts a reinterpretation of the pictures this Swiss artist made of his young son Hector. The author rejects traditional Freudian speculations and uses a hitherto neglected and repudiated source for understanding Hodler's symbolism, the social and artistic ideas of a circle of Rosicrucians to which the painter adhered.