The German Genius

the energy of expression demanded it.” 44
    Ludwig behaved in much the same way toward Schnorr after he arrived in Munich in 1827 to join Cornelius. His first commission was to be a fresco cycle based on the Odyssey but Ludwig soon tired of that, preferring instead the Nibelungenlied for the newly built Royal Palace in Munich, modeled on the Palazzo Pitti. These frescoes took almost forty years before they were finished, mainly because Schnorr could not get enthusiastic about a nonreligious commission. But other schemes took almost as long, and when Cornelius abandoned Munich for Berlin, Schnorr became the target of the same critics who had attacked his friend. And so, when Schnorr visited Dresden in 1841 and was offered the directorship of the academy there, Ludwig made no attempt to keep him.
    Schnorr produced one very successful work in Dresden, a series of 240 wood blocks—a Picture Bible . “If the Nazarenes left a testament, a justification of all they had wanted to accomplish, it could not have been more aptly demonstrated than in these Bible pictures…yet they were not a communal work but the work of one man who was not even of their immediate circle.” 45 The Nazarenes never quite made it. Possibly, they were simply too theoretical.
    A N EW V OCABULARY FOR P AINTING
     
    Many of the ideas and themes raised in the first section of this book come together in the work of the painter Caspar David Friedrich, who arrived in Dresden in 1798. His symbolism, his nationalism, his concern with the sublime, his Romanticism, his inner battle over the Christian faith…all these are reflected in his very distinctive form of art. “He painted mysteries and has remained something of a mystery himself.” 46
    Born in the Baltic harbor town of Greifswald, in Pomerania, in 1774, Friedrich was the son of a candle maker and soap boiler. 47 After studying at the Copenhagen Academy he visited several conspicuous beauty spots in Germany, choosing eventually to settle in Dresden, and remaining there until his death. His highly distinctive style may be partly explained in personal terms: his mother died when he was seven and the brother he was closest to drowned while the two boys were ice-skating. Caspar suffered a lifelong sense of guilt.
    At Copenhagen his teachers were exponents of Danish neoclassicism. Their emphasis on drawing from nature, combined with Friedrich’s early love of travel, seems to have bred in him a fascination with landscape. No-tably, his landscapes are populated by small isolated figures and megaliths or “heroic ruins.” In time he evolved his own iconological vocabulary. “He painted Nordic images with an apocalyptic dimension, his landscapes rarely depict daylight or sunlight, rather they show dawn, dusk, fog or mist.” 48 His contemporaries assumed this was his portrayal of the German “mood” as a result of the French invasion—politically weak but intellectually strong. Either way, Friedrich became convinced that the contemplation of nature leads us to a deeper appreciation of the way things are. His clear technique, mysterious scenes, and lighting effects (in this he was a forerunner of Salvador Dalí, in particular) ensured that his reputation grew quickly. He secured patrons and prizes equally and formed friendships with the main figures of German Romanticism.
    One of his most typical—and most controversial—paintings was Cross on the Mountains , 1808, also known as the Tetschen Altarpiece. The crucified Christ is shown in profile, at the top of a mountain. Christ is alone, surrounded only by nature. In terms of size, the Cross is an insignificant element in the composition, which is dominated by the rays of the setting sun, symbolizing the old pre-Christian world, as Friedrich admitted. 49 By the same token, the mountain represented immovable faith, with the many fir trees being an allegory of hope. This was the first time anyone had produced a landscape intended as an altarpiece, and not everyone liked it. But Friedrich produced several other paintings in which crosses dominate a landscape, and whether occupied by Christian symbols or not, his landscapes are all spiritual entities first and foremost, “rife with mystical atmosphere.” His friendships with Romantic writers had convinced him, he said, that “art must have its source in man’s inner being; yet, it must be dependent on a moral or religious value.” 50
    His other famous painting is The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog