Focus on The Temple of Juno in Agrigento and explain the abstract.
The Temple of Juno in Agrigento (German - Junotempel in Agrigent) is an 1828-1830 oil on canvas painting of by Caspar David Friedrich. It is now in the Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte in Dortmund, which bought it from a Cologne art dealer in 1951. It is said to have been previously owned by the F. A. Brockhaus publishers in Leipzig.
The work shows the 460-450 BC Temple of Hera Lacinia in the Valle dei Templi in Agrigento, Sicily, sacked by the Carthaginians around 406 BC, rebuilt by the Romans and the subject of renewed interest for classicists and antiquarians from the mid 18th-century onwards. It was visited by both Jacob Philipp Hackert and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, with the latter writing in his letters "The current view of the Temple of Juno is as gritty as one could wish for". However, Friedrich never visited Italy and produced the work from a print by another artist.
In 1943 Hermann Beenken published the painting with an attribution to Friedrich, later reattributing it to Carl Gustav Carus. Helmut Börsch-Supan argues it cannot be a late work by Carus, but is instead a Friedrich.
Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Hermann Beenken Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Helmut Börsch-Supan Dortmund Caspar David Friedrich Temple of Hera Lacinia Carl Gustav Carus Agrigento Valle dei Templi Jacob Philipp Hackert