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1789-1869
German
German religious painter. Expelled from the Vienna Academy because of his opposition to its classicism, he went to Rome and with Peter von Cornelius, Veit, Schadow-Godenhaus, and others, formed the group known as the Nazarenes. His first real successes were his frescoes for the Casa Bartholdy (now in Berlin) and for the Villa Massimo. Among his notable paintings are Christ Entry into Jerusalem and Christ Agony in the Garden. Overbeck sought to make his art serve religion. His influence was due more to the purity of his doctrine than to the power of his work, which is often lacking in pictorial appeal and in color.
The Cross in the Mountains
1812 Oil on canvas, 45 x 37 cm Museum Kunst Palast, Desseldorf Visions of Gothic architecture appear regularly in the artist's work from Winter Landscape with Church (1811, Dortmund), rising like a man-made enigma in a mysterious landscape scenario. An example is provided by The Cross in the Mountains, which can be dated fairly confidently to 1812, and which has long been viewed as a further development of the Tetschen Altar. The rough and rocky terrain of the foreground surrounds a spring, behind which, within an indeterminate space, rise a dark wall of fir trees and the gabled faeade of a Gothic church, reduced to a shadowy silhouette. A wayside calvary marks the border between foreground and back- ground. The logic of space and time seems to have been abandoned in this painting in favour of the unreality of a dream. Artist: FRIEDRICH, Caspar David Title: The Cross in the Mountains , painting Date: 1801-1850 German : landscape
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