Eldena Ruin near Greifswald

c. 1824-1825

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840)

By permission of Art Resource, New York, NY

The Ruin of the Cistercian monastery is only a few miles outside of Friedrich’s native city of Greifswald on the Baltic Sea.  Having already taken an interest in the ruin while apprenticing with his instructor in drawing, Johann Gottfried Quistorp, Friedrich’s canvas is distinguished by its naturalistic approach, characteristic of his work during this period.  The sprawling vegetation seems in the process of reclaiming for nature the architectural achievements of mankind.  The day-laborer’s cottage nestled into the abbey’s ruin was subsequently torn down in 1828.  For Friedrich, the pedestrian cottage offers an appropriate visualization of an impoverished modernity, as such in sharp contrast to the imposing monuments of medieval religious culture.  The abbey itself had been founded in 1199 and had fallen into decay since the seventeenth century, likely in consequence of repeated military campaigns associated with the Thirty-Years War.  The oaks flanking the picture in the manner of Claude Lorrain and other major landscape painters of the preceding century were Friedrich’s inventions.  According to a letter by Friedrich, “ruins may rise as witnesses of a grand past over a sickly present.”

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