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Your galleryStatue of the Madonna in the Mountains
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- Where does your eye go next?
- What would you ask about this work?
Show me
Locate the statue on the central peak and the tiny kneeling pilgrim below it, then compare them with the wide, almost empty sky.
Friedrich made this early Dresden landscape in 1804 using ink, gray wash, and graphite. A praying pilgrim beneath a statue gives the mountain setting a religious focus. Rather than relying on vivid color, the drawing builds distance through graded grays and makes the human presence small within the surrounding terrain.
Brush and black ink and gray wash, with graphite, on cream wove paper · 24.4 × 38.2 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Romanticism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Statue of the Madonna in the Mountains
- Artist
- Caspar David Friedrich German, 1774-1840
- Date
- 1804
- Medium
- Brush and black ink and gray wash, with graphite, on cream wove paper
- Dimensions
- 24.4 × 38.2 cm (9 5/8 × 15 1/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Margaret Day Blake Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.