Caspar David Friedrich The Tree of Crows 1822 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