Caspar David Friedrich and the anatomy of nature

• Autores: Nina Aumstutz
• Localización: Art history: journal of the Association of Art Historians, ISSN 0141-6790, Vol. 37, Nº. 3, 2014, págs. 454-481
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In the late 1820s, the German romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich created a series of landscapes without human figures, in which trees are magnified and treated with the same attention to character as portraits. These landscapes have a formal affinity to popular anatomical illustrations of the nervous and vascular systems. This resemblance is explored in the context of contemporary developments in natural science and philosophy, particualry the search for universal forms and processes across the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Friedrich's portraits of dendrites are interpreted as metaphors for the inner structure of the body and as a form of interiorized self-portraiture.