In our explorations of the concept of “gothic” we have touched on the reemergence of interest in medieval form which affected the romantic movement of the 19th century (here are links about how this happened in literature and architecture). Aside from a cursory mention of the Pre-Raphaelites however, we have not touched deeply on how gothic aesthetic forms affected painting.
Enter one of my favorite romantic painters, Caspar David Friedrich (September 5, 1774 – May 7, 1840), a tempestuous German whose tragic early life drew him towards haunting gothic landscapes. Friedrich painted melancholy scenes of emptiness and ruin: humans inhabiting his landscapes tend to be dwarfed by ancient trees, sharp mountains, and abandoned medieval buildings (or, worse, they are absent altogether). By showing how trifling people are in the face of time and nature, Friedrich hoped to highlight what is sublime about existence. He often painted cemeteries and winter landscapes and he has combined these two themes in Abtei im Eichwald (“The Abbey in the Oakland”) which portrays Eldena Abbey, a Cistercian Abbey in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern destroyed by Swedish troops during the Thirty-Years War. Insect-like mourners struggle through a snowy churchyard dominated by a great gothic arch. Although the trees are barren, the church is broken, and the land is literally dead, there is an exalted dignity to the great abbey which ruin has somehow enhanced.
Friedrich came back to this theme again and again. Another winter cemetery work Hünengrab im Schnee (“Dolmen in Snow”) lacks even the bleak notes of Christianity which suffuse Abtei im Eichwald. The canvas shows a prehistoric barrow covered in snow beneath ancient black oak trees. The leafless trees and the snow on the grave of a millennia-dead Mesolithic king, give an impression of lifeless bleakness, and yet as always with Friedrich (and indeed with romantic aesthetics) the tension in the work draws the eye and leads to philosophical meditation. Even in the stark frozen tableau there is still a struggle against hopelessness. Friedrich always found a way to show the triumph of haunting beauty which is transcendent over darkness.
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July 25, 2011 at 10:17 PM
Perry
Nothing but this, I can say, immediatley, my vision… this painting is almost completely pratical christianity… it serves a basic moralising purpose. ONe can almost divide the entire peice into triplets. It is is complete orthodoxy. SHows almost nothing of romanticism and very little of this painting is indebted to to primeval science, to paganism. The pagan mind is only rendered here where triplets cannot be discovered. Consider the trees, the dolmon, the triangle of the snow cap. All is a triplet, even in the way the branches unfurl. THis is deep Christianity. This is the same sort of christianity that exists in stave churches. A chriistianity of instinct. It is the Christianity of oaks. Of lighting bolts and wrathful gods. It is the christianity that has been subdued. THis is love in its heroic aspect, impressing us … I don’t care how unpunctuated and confusing my typing is … I’m sorry… I’m not supposed to be here.
July 26, 2011 at 12:20 PM
Hieronymo
You’re definitely welcome here! And you are quite right that Friedrich was a Christian painter. He himself wrote “the noble person recognizes God in everything, the common person sees only the form not the spirit.” However, it does not seem like his faith stood in opposition to his romanticism and individualism. Rather he saw the numinous in the sublime (a philosophical and aesthetic approach to godhood common among the Romantics). Here is a link to an essay about the Christian spirituality of German Romanticism.
January 9, 2015 at 11:57 PM
AManCalledDada
Friedrich’s works also presuppose the next 150 years of German history.
January 12, 2015 at 10:33 PM
Wayne
Your comment would be funny, if it weren’t all too tragically true!