Caspar David Friedrich

The Soul of Nature

Alison Hokanson, Joanna Seidenstein, Joseph Leo Koerner , Cordula Grewe

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English

Metropolitan Museum of Ar
04 March 2025

Art & Architecture; History of Art & Design Styles; Individual artists, art monographs

A richly illustrated volume surveying the career of Caspar David Friedrich, the German landscape painter whose emotionally profound visions of nature are among the most iconic works of Romantic art

The paintings and drawings of the nineteenth-century German landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) brilliantly illuminate our experience of the natural world. This generously illustrated volume explores how Friedrich, who created some of the most indelible images of Romantic art, deployed signature motifs—moonlit skies, Gothic ruins, isolated figures, and misty panoramas—together with innovative compositional strategies to create paintings and drawings that are metaphorically rich and emotionally profound. Friedrich worked at the dawn of a new understanding in Europe of the human relationship with the nature, as German artists and intellectuals elevated the exploration of nature into a journey of self-discovery, yielding insights into spirituality, mortality, identity, and history. Essays by leading scholars examine Friedrich's career, considering how he created a new and open-ended pictorial language to express the Romantic vision of nature. Placing his works in cultural and historic context, the authors evaluate his status as an icon of German Romanticism and as a touchstone for visual culture in the United States, while also exploring his working methods and the complex themes that underpinned his art.

Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press

Exhibition Schedule:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

(February 8–May 11, 2025)

By: Alison Hokanson, Joanna Seidenstein
Contributions by: Joseph Leo Koerner, Cordula Grewe
Imprint: Metropolitan Museum of Ar
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 267mm, Width: 229mm,
ISBN: 9781588397898
ISBN 10: 1588397890
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 04 March 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Alison Hokanson is associate curator in the Department of European Paintings, and Joanna Seidenstein is assistant curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints, both at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.