Frank Wedekind (1864-1918) was one of the most frequently played German dramatists of his time and well known as an enfant terrible. His plays expressed a great amount of intertextual references to art and science. His characters reflect this, his plays regularly feature artists, painters, and singers . “Spring awakening”, one of Wedekind’s best known plays (in German, “Frühlings Erwachen”) is a prime example of this. Hänschen Rilow masturbates to reproductions of well-known artworks; one of them being Palma il Vecchio’s “Venus”. This particular scene illustrates one of the functions of quoting art in Wedekind’s plays: it is employed to criticize social rules and double standards. “Franziska. A mystery in five acts,” first published in 1912, appears as Wedekind’s “Faust.” Titian’s Sacred and profane love is a key element in Franziska as it takes on a programmatic function. The Renaissance painting from 1514 appears twice, first as an etching on the front page and then as the model of a detailed scenery for a “play in play“- like tableau vivant and accordingly portraying a self-referential part of the play. Titian’s original and Wedekind’s theatrical version, both feature two women: one naked and the other dressed in luxurious white, next to a fountain, which may have originally been a sarcophagus. Between them is a naked, putto like, child bending over the edge, seemingly looking at his reflection in the water. The original painting correlates nudity with divine creation and attributes the dressed woman as symbolizing “profane love,” paradigm changed in Wedekind’s times. To his contemporaries the naked woman symbolizes purity, while at the same time represents sin. In his interpretation, Wedekind does remain closer to the original meaning: the dressed woman stands for “truth,” while the other symbolizes “holy nudity”. Both concepts are intimately linked to one another, “because he, who cannot see nudity cannot hear the truth.” In the painting both personifications of love appear very similar, almost like sisters. The similarity of appearance underlines the intimate closeness of both kinds of love. Sexuality, symbolized by nudity, becomes functionalized by Wedekind as a means to finding one’s true self and gaining self-awareness. Positive sexual experiences can eliminate negative events. Therefore, both forms of love, “profane” and “sacred,” are interconnected. This also implies that the contemporary interpretation of distinguishing between “profane” as physical and “sacred” as intellectual love is obliterated. As it appears in a “play in play” situation, the symbolic narration should be read as a self-referential statement; the set of values identified here has validity for the entire play. Besides Titian’s famous painting, which Wedekind saw a copy of in Galerie Schack, Munich, there is also a reference to a painting of Mother Mary. After experiencing the joy of being a man, Franziska is then portrayed as an unmarried mother. Instead of diminishing her status, Franziska is painted in the likelihood of Madonna with child. The painting’s description resembles “Madonna of the Rose Bower” by Stefan Lochner, while the setting also refers to a photograph of Franziska zu Reventlow with her illegitimate son (also known as “heathen Madonna”). Sexuality and eroticism play a key role, being depicted as high values in this play and others by Wedekind, although at the end of “Franziska” the protagonist appears as a (re)virginized mother. This assumption reveals much about expectations and gender roles. Franziska’s status of being a (re)virginized mother retrospectively legitimizes premarital sex. Franziska becomes an asexual character. Using many canonized works of art and intertextual references, like Titian, the play firmly situates itself in the realms of a long tradition of art, and thus aims to legitimize itself and its certain extreme ideas and values.