# The Cross in the Mountains [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [FRIEDRICH, Caspar David]() - Date: 1801-1850 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 45 x 37 cm ## Commentary 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 façade 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. ## Related artworks - [Adolf Gottlieb Friedrich, Reading]() - [Boats in the Harbour at Evening]() - [Bohemian Landscape with Mount Milleschauer]() - [Chalk Cliffs at Rügen]() - [Chalk Cliffs on Rügen]() - [Cross in the Mountains]() - [Cross in the Mountains \(Tetschen Altar\)]() - [Cross in the Mountains \(Tetschen Altar\)]() - [Dolmen in the Snow]() - [Drifting Clouds]() - [Easter Morning]() - [Evening Landscape with Two Men]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()