Describing his iconic painting Monk by the Sea to a friend, Caspar David Friedrich wrote,
And if you were to meditate from morning to evening, from evening to deepening midnight; you would never comprehend, never fathom the unknowable hereafter!... Which is only ever sacred intuition, to be seen and recognized only in belief.
This work has become a watershed painting in the history of art precisely because it refuses to be interpreted. And yet it is evidently meaningful. However, Friedrich didn’t leave his friend, or us, without hope or direction. He advised that his art had proceeded from a sense of purpose that he called “sacred intuition,” and that it could “be seen and recognized only in belief.”
Diverging Views
Seeing with belief has been a challenge for art historians. Friedrich is, perhaps second only to Albrecht Dürer, Germany’s most celebrated visual artist. His work has generated a rich and vast body of literature, but not always scholarly consensus. Unlike Dürer, Friedrich’s place in the history of Christianity and the visual arts is a subject of sharply contrasting opinions. Helmut Börsch-Supan, who edited the first catalogue raisonné of Friedrich’s paintings, has read these images as visual allegories in which every motif is symbolic of Christian themes such as faith, perseverance, and salvation. He compared viewing Friedrich’s art to eavesdropping on someone’s prayers. However, by reading every motif as symbolic representations of traditional Christian themes, Börsch-Supan seemed to assume that Friedrich’s art could only be “Christian” if it was made didactic.
The two most influential scholars on Friedrich in English, Robert Rosenblum and Joseph Koerner, have been skeptical of reading his art as an expression of Christian belief. Rosenblum suggested that Friedrich’s development of motifs from nature rather than the Bible evidenced a shift in orientation, from an unknowable God to a world centered around the self. Rosenblum wrote that Monk by the Sea “conforms to no canonic religious subject and could therefore be considered in no way a religious painting.” Rosenblum made a detailed analysis of how Friedrich’s historical context was characterized by the problem of “how to express experiences of the spiritual, of the transcendental, without having recourse to such traditional themes as the Adoration, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Ascension…” Nevertheless, Rosenblum failed to show how, either in his art or outside of it, Friedrich was anything other than a devout Lutheran.
If Rosenblum regarded Friedrich’s art as expressions of doubt, Joseph Koerner described the openness of Friedrich’s paintings as a longing for an inaccessible God. “Friedrich empties his canvas in order to imagine, through an invocation of the void, an infinite, unrepresentable God. The precise nature of this divinity, as well as the rites and culture that might serve it, remain open questions, yet the religious intention in Friedrich’s art is unmistakable.” Koerner explored how a faith in art satisfies, as best it can, the spiritual hunger for an unknowable God. But he concluded that Friedrich’s paintings “always station us on the way to, but never having yet arrived at, the altar, the divine, or meaning.” Koerner constructed a thorough and critical analysis of Friedrich’s visual language and he contextualized the artist in specific philosophical, political, and even theological theories; however, if Friedrich is correct, that his art can “be seen and recognized only in belief,” Koerner’s project was fated to disappoint.
Disputing both Rosenblum and Koerner’s arguments, Jonathan Anderson and William Dyrness have proposed that Friedrich perceived nature as a revelation of God. Highlighting Friedrich’s early connections to the poet and Lutheran pastor Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten, Anderson and Dryness situated the artist within a distinctly Protestant tradition of personal piety. Given the limitations of space in a book devoted to the larger topic of religion in modernist art, their discussion of Friedrich is a most insightful introduction to questions, such as the nature and impact of Friedrich’s relationship with Kosegarten, that need more investigation.
The Soul of Nature
Friedrich’s 250 birthday in 2024 was the occasion for several exhibitions across Germany, at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, and the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden. And the last of these anniversary exhibitions was recently held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Due to the popularity of his art during most his career, Friedrich’s paintings are rare outside of Germany and Russia. Therefore, the Metropolitan exhibition, titled The Soul of Nature, was a unique opportunity to consider Friedrich’s place in the history of Christianity and the visual arts.
Taking the viewer on a journey through Friedrich’s entire career, The Soul of Nature explored how his motif choices and visual strategies evolved across personal and historical narratives. Casting his art against the philosophical currents of the early 19th century, the exhibition wall text treated Friedrich’s faith fairly and straightforwardly, while also leaving other readings open. The exhibition catalog essays and entries pursued this issue even further. Throughout the catalog most of the authors treat Friedrich’s Christianity generously. There is an overall recognition that his works employ motifs from nature to symbolically visualize a Christian faith in God’s presence in this life and a hope of salvation in the next.
Self-Portrait
The Soul of Nature opened with a self-portrait that Friedrich had created when he was twenty-five years old and established as a professional artist. Having been born in 1774 on the coast of the Baltic Sea, in the town of Greifswald, Friedrich studied art at the Academy of Copenhagen. In 1798, he settled in Dresden, where he would live for the rest of his life.
The exhibition catalog calls attention to the crosses reflected in Friedrich’s eyes. Most likely these are a window in his studio. It should be noted that we can also find these crosses/windows in the eyes of portraits and self-portraits of other artists, such as Dürer. Nevertheless, the question of how we interpret what we see is a recurring issue in Friedrich’s art. Reflecting on the recurrences of crosses in his art, Friedrich would later comment that, for some viewers, these were reminders of faith but that, for others, they were just crosses. However, by beginning with this self-portrait, the exhibition situated Friedrich’s art between two distinct conceptual orientations of sight, empirical observation and spiritual vision.
View of Arkona with Rising Moon
After some false starts into sentimental imagery, Friedrich found his artistic voice, as a painter of nature, around 1805 with works such as View of Arkona with Rising Moon [1805-1806, brown ink and wash over pencil on wove paper; partial framing line in black-brown ink, 60.9 × 100 cm]. This painting depicts Vitt Beach on the Island of Rügen. Since this island was located near the town of Greifswald, where he had been raised, the artist returned numerous times, over the course of his career, to study Rügen’s rocky coastline and boundless views of the sea.
Taking advantage of his sepia material, Friedrich composed the sky as a slow but discernable process of the gradation of light. Friedrich is celebrated as a painter of landscapes. However, in his art, all of the details of the landscape, which he had carefully observed and rendered with precision, are unified by light. For Friedrich, landscape and light were coexistent elements of nature.
Since it doesn’t fit with the popular image of Friedrich as a skeptic with a melancholic personality, scholars have largely unvalued the role that light has in his visual method. And yet, in work after work, he employs light not only as a source of illumination but as a force of spiritual transformation. Friedrich’s light-infused landscapes visualize God’s manifestation of Himself in the present moment.
The shoreline of Rügen had an additional significance for Friedrich. This was pastor Kosegarten’s place of ministry. A personal friend of Friedrich, and a collector of his art, Kosegarten was famous for given sermons on the beaches of Rügen, so that the fishermen could listen as they were working. These so-called shore sermons often employed the natural environment of the sea and sky as proof of God’s presence in the modern world.
The spiritual kinship between Friedrich and Kosegarten is evidenced in the plans Friedrich designed for a shoreside chapel. There was even the possibility that Friedrich would paint an altarpiece for this chapel. In the end, the chapel was never realized; however, Kosegarten had a formative impact on Friedrich’s conception of nature as a specific revelation of God’s creative character.
The Cross in the Mountains
Friedrich began painting in oil around 1807 and one of his first works in that medium was the celebrated and criticized Cross in the Mountains, also known as the Tetschen Altar (1808, oil on canvas, 115 x 110 cm). Regrettably this painting was not in the New York exhibition. However, there were several paintings in The Soul of Nature that closely relate to the Tetschen Altar.
The first of these was a sepia work, entitled Cross in the Mountains. Like many of Friedrich’s sepia on paper paintings, this work visualizes an intersection of landscape and light. However, the point where the rocky mountain meets the luminous sky is marked by a crucifix. In the region where Friedrich lived, these devotional sculptures often marked pilgrimage destinations.
In this image, we see the wayside crucifix three quarters from behind. This visually activates an image in which there is no depiction of movement. But Friedrich depicts the motif as if we were pilgrims approaching it. The sky has its own topography. Suddenly there is a break in the clouds, as if the top of the cross had punctured the sky.
Mountain-top, wayside, and seaside crosses are recurring motifs in Friedrich’s art. Perhaps he recognized a spiritual parallel between these devotional objects and his own art. While these crosses visually encourage a spiritual contemplation, they do not dictate a narrative. They are objects of pilgrimage and meditation. And likewise, Friedrich’s paintings are visual journeys of contemplation. Cross in the Mountains could be described as a visual meditation on the practice of spiritual meditation.
Cross by the Baltic Sea
Emboldened by the critical success of the Tetschen Altar, Friedrich proceeded to create many more works in which we encounter the motif of the cross, or crucifix, in nature. The Soul of Nature included several of these works, Morning Mist in the Mountains [c.1807-1808, oil on canvas, 71 × 104 cm], Cross in the Mountains [c. 1812, oil on canvas, 45 × 38 cm], Cross in the Forest [c. 1812, oil on canvas, 42.2 × 32.6 cm], and Cross by the Baltic Sea [1815, oil on canvas, 26 × 19.3 cm].
In Cross by the Baltic Sea, a wooden cross rises above a distant horizon. The moonlit sea is empty, except for a single boat. Cast against the sky, the cross seems heroic. At a time when works of art were expected to depict human figures in dramatic narratives, Friedrich developed an art in which nature, as the creation of God, was the principal actor.
Describing Cross by the Baltic Sea, Friedrich wrote, “The cross is erected on the bare seashore; to those who see it a source of consolation, to those who do not see it, simply a cross.” The artist understood that his motifs were themselves tests of faith.
Looking at works such as Cross by the Baltic Sea, I find it hard to agree with the proposition that Friedrich had turned to motifs from nature out of a disenchantment with Christianity. In the post-enlightenment world that Rosenblum describes, would it not have been easier for Friedrich to dispense with all religious motifs? The persistence of motifs such as crosses and church buildings, across the entirety of Friedrich’s oeuvre, suggests a perseverance of a personal faith in God and in Christianity.
Monk by the Sea
The Baltic coast was also the location for one of the centerpieces of The Soul of Nature, Friedrich’s celebrated Monk by the Sea. As we have already noted, Friedrich designed this work to shun interpretation. One of the mysteries that has surrounded this work is the identity of the figure. For some, this monk is an isolated individual standing at the edge between the material and spiritual worlds. Some art historians have proposed that this monk is a self-portrait, thus turning the work into a sort of confession or lamentation. And at least one contemporary critic, Heinrich von Kleist, saw this lone figure as Kosegarten. As unlikely as it might be that this figure is Kosegarten, what Kleist called this painting’s Kosegarten-effect is a question that is worth further consideration. This work visualizes a kinship with his theology in two ways. The first was Kosegarten’s teaching that God could be known directly through a contemplative study of nature. And the second, was the belief that true faith only begins where comprehension has reached its limits.
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog
Monk by the Sea also includes a motif that would become synonymous with Friedrich’s art, the figure seen from behind, in German Rückenfigur. Friedrich didn’t invent the motif of the figure seen from behind, but he recognized and developed this motif’s psychological and spiritual potential. The prominence of these figures establish what we might call a conscious moment of perception. We become more aware of our own looking.
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog features one of the most famous strangers in the history of art. This anonymous hiker has reached a summit from which he has an unbounded view of nature. This Rückenfigur introduces ambiguity into Friedrich’s image. How far away is this figure? Is he aware of being observed? Do we, in fact, see ourselves in this figure? The Met Exhibition catalog notes that this wanderer is dressed in fashionable urban clothing that would be inappropriate, or at least uncomfortable, for a hike to the top of a mountain. Perhaps Friedrich imagined that this painting would be seen in Berlin or Dresden gallery by a viewer who was similarly dressed. (If this man were dressed like a shepherd, the contemporary gallery visitor might perceive him as “other.”) Friedrich seems to have calculated how to make this figure simultaneously accessible and remote. The distance between being in the painting and being in front of the painting depends on the viewer’s perceptual vantage point.
Friedrich has aligned the figure’s head with the horizon. Perhaps it is this edge between the earth and the sky that is occupying his mind. Friedrich’s composition visually situates the figure both in the near foreground and the distance. The wanderer is in two places at once. Furthermore, while the figure is framed by nature, there are also details, such as the space between his torso and arm where nature is framed by the figure. He is both separate from and engaged with the landscape.
As the title suggests, one of the principal motifs in this work is fog. Friedrich said, “When a landscape is covered in fog, it appears larger, more sublime, and heightens the strength of the imagination.” Perhaps this man is imagining that, traveling in time, he is a witness to the first moments of creation, when the earth was being formed out of void. Genesis 2:6 reads, “But a fog went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.”
By creating a figure who seems to stand outside of time, Friedrich has created a timeless image.
Woman before the Rising or Setting Sun
We also find the Rückenfigur in Friedrich’s Woman before the Rising Sun (also Woman before the Setting Sun, there is no scholarly consensus on the time of day). This woman, perhaps Friedrich’s wife Caroline, is completely absorbed by this sunlight. Since we can’t see her face, we read her experience through her pose. In awe of this transitory moment, in which natural light is made transcendent, her arms are extended. Her palms are open in a gesture of reception. The woman’s outstretched arms complete a circle begun by the beams of light that radiate from beyond the horizon. In this way, Friedrich visually, and spiritually, connects the figure in the foreground with the infinite expanse of space that lay beyond the limits of our sight.
Depicting this woman in a state of adoration, Friedrich’s image is a descendant of a rich history of worshiping figures in the history of Christianity and the visual arts. We can trace the lineage of this type of worshiping figure all the way back to early fourth century paintings on the ceiling of the Catacomb of Saints Peter and Marcellinus in Rome. In this Early Christian composition, we discover alternating images of praying figures and scenes from the story of Jonah. This work suggests how, from the very beginning, Christian art had two streams, one narrative oriented and the other meditative. Friedrich’s art belongs to this second type of sacred image. While his art rarely depicts overtly religious narratives, Friedrich expanded the parameters of the history of Christianity in the visual arts.
Part of the appeal of Friedrich’s art is that it doesn’t take a didactic tone. Instead, it cultivates a spiritual response from the viewer. This woman models a devotional experience. Friedrich’s painting instills the spiritually sensitive viewer with an experience of God, as he is revealed in his own creation.
The Riesengebirge
While paintings such as Cross by the Baltic Sea employ overtly religious motifs, the question of how to situate Friedrich’s art into the history of Christianity and the visual arts is not simple. Works such as Riesengebirge are nearly devoid of any human presence, the single figure near the foreground right is visually absorbed into the landscape. And this work certainly contains no religious symbols. And yet it is possible that Friedrich’s painting encourages a shift in perception, from an observation of nature to a vision of the sacred, that places it squarely within the purposes of Christian art.
Like other paintings that we have already looked at, this image of nature is also principally composed of two elements: the landscape and the light.
The landscape recedes from the foreground to the horizon. The foreground is painted in rich detail. If one looks closely, you can see leaves on the trees. But you have to look closely because the foreground is in shadow.
As we move into the distance, the details dissolve but the space is filled with light. Moving from the foreground to the background, we move from observation to “sacred intuition.” We move from seeing with the eye to seeing with the soul.
Moving through this landscape painting’s design, Friedrich takes us on a journey from empirical observation to spiritual perception. Along the way our capacity to see and imagine, two qualities Friedrich insisted are essential to understanding his art, is refined. But our pilgrimage does not end at the horizon.
There is also pouring over the horizon, from beyond the horizon, a light. This atmospheric light unifies everything that we see. This light is a visualization of divine presence. One of the fundamental misconceptions of Friedrich’s art is the proposition, advanced by scholars such as Koerner, that the artist positions God somewhere beyond the horizon. This interpretation reads Friedrich’s art as a melancholy meditation on the inaccessibility of God. But this is not the case. In Friedrich’s art God is omnipresent and imminent. God’s presence actively fills His creation. Just as the light not only illuminates but fills the landscape.
A Walk at Dusk
In 1825, and again in 1835, Friedrich suffered a stroke. The second stroke left him extremely limited in his physical capacity to paint. This gives works such as A Walk at Dusk [c. 1830–1835, oil on canvas, 33.7 × 43.2 cm] a sense of impending mortality, even though Friedrich lived for another five years.
On an autumn evening, a man has paused before a dolmen. This giant rock marks a pre-historic grave. The background of this scene is populated by numerous trees. Because one group of trees is positioned directly behind the rock, the branches appear to grow out of the rock. This scene is illuminated by the waxing moon and evening star. If the stone is a symbol of temporal mortality, the moon visualizes the hope of eternal life.
The crescent moon, as a symbol of Christ’s death and resurrection, can be found in Northern Renaissance art, such as Jan Gossaert’s Christ in the Garden (c. 1510, oil on panel, 85 x 63 cm) as well as in Modernist art, such as Vincent van Gogh’s Cypresses (1889, oil on canvas, 93.4 x 74 cm). By situating Friedrich between Gossaert and Vincent, we can consider his place in art history. In Gossaert’s painting, nature is subordinate to the Christ-centered narrative. Vincent’s landscape includes no figures; the trees are sufficient to convey a sense of spiritual growth through an experience of struggle. But, in Friedrich’s painting, the pilgrim and nature contribute equally to the construction of meaning. Both have significance within the design of God’s creation.
Friedrich and Dürer
Friedrich’s oeuvre is important to the history of Christianity and the visual arts because it expands the vocabulary with which the visualization of the sacred is possible. The shape of Christian art that Friedrich inherited might be exemplified by Dürer’s exceptional painting The Four Apostles. In this diptych, we are confronted by full length portraits of four New Testament authors. One panel feature Mark and Paul. A sword-bearing guardian of proper doctrine, Paul has the expression of a stern instructor. And, in the other panel the figure of John holds open a copy of his gospel. The text “In the beginning was the word” hangs in the air. Behind John, the figure of Peter, the figure from whom the Pope in Rome is a spiritual descendent, bows his head in submission to the word. Dürer’s Four Apostles not only depicts a Christian motif, but it also visualizes specific, and distinctly Protestant, belief in the primacy of the scripture.
The Four Apostles is one of the first examples of a distinctly Protestant art. At a time when these questions were fiercely contested, Dürer’s image promoted a break from the Roman Catholic submission to Rome. But this image still commands a collective submission. In Riesengebirge, Friedrich departed from the model that we find in The Four Apostles not only in the exchange of overtly religious motifs for images of landscape and light, but also in its adoption of a devotional method rather than a didactic tone.
However, Friedrich’s art also evidences a continuity with, or at least an extension of, Dürer. One might argue that Friedrich’s art is even more Protestant than Dürer’s, in that Riesengebirge cultivates a personal piety rather than a collective adherence to doctrine. If Dürer’s image tells us what to believe, Friedrich’s art asks us what we believe.
Seen in Belief
Working in an age of religious skepticism, Friedrich created an art of faith. While his paintings sometimes depict moments of faith, such as the woman in the sunlight, they are more often designed to awaken and expand the viewer’s capacity for faith. Friedrich developed a creative method in which the contemplation of nature led to a knowledge of and faith in God. Friedrich believed that, since God was the creator of the universe, He was also revealed in nature. Friedrich called this ability to perceive the invisible God within the appearances of nature a “sacred intuition, to be seen and recognized only in belief.”
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