How does this artwork elucidate its Interpretations and analysis?
The central figure, Friedrich's wife Caroline, has an informal stance, creating the impression that Friedrich observed and captured the scene at a precise moment in time. The woman's posture reflects an intimate moment in Friedrich's domestic sphere. As she observes the view from the artist's studio she appears relaxed and reserved. The simplicity of the domestic space leads the viewer's gaze to the view beyond the window to the masts of the ships gliding on the Elbe and the greenery in the distance. Friedrich mirrors the canvas's form with the rectangular window within the piece. The painting itself can be seen as a window through which the viewer can see this scene, reflecting the same action as the woman within the piece. She peers outside the window into a different sphere, just as the viewer does when observing this painting. Just as the woman in this painting has an obscured view, the spectator is also “in a position of exile from, and longing for, what we can always only partially see.” Often in his landscapes, Friedrich employs symmetry in relation to the central figure; the symmetry emerges from this figure symbolizing their interconnectedness and spiritual experience with the landscape. However, in this painting, the central figure is separated from the landscape; the spiritual connection comes from her prayer-like posture and the form of a cross in the window pane above her head. The woman's highly symmetrical domestic space is contrasted with the asymmetrical world beyond the window, emphasized through the viewer's fragmented view of the ships and the poplars on the banks of the river.One scholar contradicts the commonly agreed upon idea that the lines of the floorboards and shutters converge on the central point of the painting, observing instead that if one follows the lines, they will converge on a point just left to the direct center of the image. This off-centered convergence point is indicative of the viewpoint in which Friedrich observed the scene of his wife in front of the window and painted in this piece. It is argued in this interpretation that the piece "involves looking at symmetry from an angle," which coincides with Friedrich's goal to portray subjectivity as the individual's experience of a frame of reference.
Friedrich often inserts implicit religious motifs in his works, which can also be seen carefully integrated into the composition of Woman at a Window. The cross-like form of the window pane above the woman's head serves as a Christian symbol which is in between the world beyond the window pane, symbolizing the spiritual world, and the interior in which the woman stands, representing the earthly world. Beyond the cross-like form of the window frame, the masts of ships floating on the river also can serve as a religious motif, symbolizing and eliciting a desire to travel beyond the known horizons to discover knew places or spiritual enlightenment. Friedrich uses the ship as a symbol implicitly in his work The Stages of Life, where he depicts five ships as the different stages of one's life, mirroring the forms of the five figures on the shoreline. For Friedrich, the ship often was a "symbol of man's hopes and of the passage from life to death."
The Stages of Life left