About this artwork
Architect, painter, and printmaker Karl Friedrich Schinkel understood Gothic architecture as a fusion between universal Christianity and German genius. The combination here of vernacular Gothic architecture and a grand oak tree symbolizing Teutonic strength—as well as the medium of lithography itself, which had recently been invented in Munich by Alois Senefelder—infuses the print with a particularly nationalistic significance. This patriotism is all the more pointed given Germany’s military defeat at the hands of Napoleon’s army in 1806 and the subsequent occupation of Schinkel’s home of Berlin by French troops.
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Status
- Currently Off View
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Department
- Prints and Drawings
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Artist
- Karl Friedrich Schinkel
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Title
- Gothic Church Behind an Oak Grove with Tombs
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Place
- Germany (Artist's nationality:)
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Date
- 1810
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Medium
- Lithograph in black ink with touches of opaque white watercolor on brown wove paper
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Inscriptions
- Inscribed and signed recto lover edge, in stone: “Versuch die liebliche sehnsuchtsvolle Wehmuth auszudrucken welche das Herz beim Klange des Gottesdienstes aus der Kirche herschallend erfüllt, auf Stein gezeichnet von Schinkel.”
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Dimensions
- Image/plate: 48.2 × 34.2 cm (19 × 13 1/2 in.); Sheet: 52.3 × 38.2 cm (20 5/8 × 15 1/16 in.)
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Credit Line
- Harold Joachim Endowment
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Reference Number
- 1997.422
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IIIF Manifest
- https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/147622/manifest.json