In The Temple of Juno in Agrigento, how is the Sources of the Analysis elucidated?
According to Paul Ortwin Rave the work was based on an aquatint by Franz Hegi, itself based on a watercolour by Carl Ludwig Frommel. Hegi produced the aquatints for Voyage pittoresque en Sicile for the Paris book-dealer Jean Frédérik Ostervald between 1822 and 1826., though the watercolours on which they were based dated back to 1780.
Friedrich made several modifications to the source print, omitting the staffage and aloe trees in the foreground and the olive trees in the right middle ground and turning the lighting from frontal daylight to a background sunset. The rubble to the left was reworked as Elbe sandstone and the trees and shrubs turned into central European examples from Friedrich's homeland, the background mountains were altered, both showing the painter's lack of interest in the ruins' original Mediterranean setting. Altogether his alterations also demonstrate his obedience to Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld's 'Wirkungsästhetik', particularly as stated in the chapter 'Of Temples, Grottoes, Hermitages, Chapels and Ruins' in Theorie der Gartenkunst:What sensations of melancholy and sadness did not sometimes seize the traveling admirers of antiquity when, in the formerly beautifully built lands of Greece, they found sleeping places for shepherds and wild animals' caves amidst the remains of temples! [Richard] Chandler describes such a fierce appearance when he saw the ruins of the [Hellenistic] Temple of Apollo at Ura, not far from Miletus. The columns were so extraordinarily beautiful, the marble mass so large and noble that it is perhaps impossible to imagine more beautiful or majestic ruins [...] The whole mass was illuminated by the setting sun with a variety of rich inks, and cast a very strong shadow. The distant sea was flat and shiny, and bordered by a mountainous coast with rocky islands.
Friedrich's adaptations of the source watercolour and print also show the contrast between neo-classicism and romanticism and between classicising tendencies in art and Friedrich's Christian-Romanticism. The watercolour was intended not only as a tool and record of archaeology (then rapidly developing as a subject), but also as a way of transmitting to German readers as much information as possible about the ancient ruins and contemporary Sicilian vegetation, animal husbandry, local people and landscapes and a way of demonstrating to Christian readers the downfall of ancient pagan religion. In contrast, Romanticism is less interested in accurate topographical and historical information than in how the temple and landscape would act on the beholder's souls, with the temple's shadow at sunset more important than the temple itself. This especially manifests itself in the work's close-up detail, initially drawn in pencil on a light primer layer, before being reinforced with a reed pen and then glazed in several thin layers to give shades of tone and a different viewing experience at different distances.
[Richard] Chandler Franz Hegi staffage Elbe Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld Temple of Apollo at Ura Paul Ortwin Rave Carl Ludwig Frommel aquatint