Friedrich, Caspar David
The
German romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, b. Sept. 5,
1774, d. May 7, 1840, was one of the greatest exponents in European art of the
symbolic landscape.
He
studied at the Academy in Copenhagen (1794-98), and subsequently settled in
Dresden, often traveling to other parts of Germany. Friedrich's landscapes are
based entirely on those of northern Germany and are beautiful renderings of
trees, hills, harbors, morning mists, and other light effects based on a close
observation of nature.
Some
of Friedrich's best-known paintings are expressions of a religious mysticism.
In 1808 he exhibited one of his most controversial paintings, The Cross in the
Mountains (Gemaldegalerie, Dresden), in which--for the first time in Christian
art--an altarpiece was conceived in terms of a pure landscape. The cross, viewed
obliquely from behind, is an insignificant element in the composition. More
important are the dominant rays of the evening sun, which the artist said
depicted the setting of the old, pre-Christian world. The mountain symbolizes
an immovable faith, while the fir trees are an allegory of hope. Friedrich
painted several other important compositions in which crosses dominate a
landscape.
Even
some of Friedrich's apparently nonsymbolic paintings contain inner meanings,
clues to which are provided either by the artist's writings or those of his
literary friends. For example, a landscape showing a ruined abbey in the snow,
Abbey with Oak Trees (1810; Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin), can be appreciated
on one level as a bleak, winter scene, but the painter also intended the
composition to represent both the church shaken by the Reformation and the
transitoriness of earthly things.
Список
литературы
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