Francis Berger
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Cross in the Mountains: What Christianity Comes Down to Now

3/8/2022

8 Comments

 
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Cross in the Mountains (Tetschen Altarpiece) David Caspar Friedrich - 1808
David Caspar Friedrich caused quite a stir when he presented the altarpiece he had been commissioned to paint for a Catholic chapel in Tetschen, Bohemia. Unsurprisingly, his blending of landscape with Christian iconography elicited a cold reception.

Some critics complained of Friedrich's attempt to smuggle landscape painting into the church. Others were annoyed by the "Germanness" of the image. Others still by its Romantic elements, which they believed to be incompatible with Christianity.

For his part, Friedrich remained true to his Romantic notions that traditional Christian iconography placed a wedge between man and God. In this sense, Christ in the Mountains is Friedrich's solution to that wedge -- the wedge he and his fellow Romantics believed kept man from experiencing a mystical union with God.

For me, Cross in the Mountains represents the epitome of what Christianity comes down to now, which is Romantic Christianity.

The painting depicts the crucified Jesus on a lonely, silhouetted golden cross upon a rock in the mountains surrounded by fir trees. He faces the two sources of light, neither of which is naturalistic in style -- the light of a sunset or sunrise, and the light of divine that emerges in five pillar-like rays from the other side of the mountain.

Christ is not only alone, He is also turned away from the viewer, toward both the natural and divine light. The viewer stands nearby, presumably on a neighboring outcrop of rock. Christ is both close and distant; and though He does not face the viewer, His image beckons the viewer to bridge the chasm and ascend the peak upon which the cross stands. 

No other human figures or constructions exist within the composition. No church, chapel, cabin, or bridge stands below. No climber scales the rock face toward the cross. The world is reduced to a mauve and gray wash of sky, the mountain, the trees, and Jesus on the cross -- and the cross stands alone. Christ is alone looking over the expanse of the earth and heavens. Yet He silently invites the viewer to draw closer -- to make the personal choice, to seize the moment of freedom, and to commit to the ascent. 

The painting's first critics were correct. Cross in the Mountains is not classic Christian iconography. Yet this sort of criticism hardly qualifies as criticism at all because David Caspar Friedrich had not aimed to create classic Christian iconography. On the contrary, he had aimed to paint the sort of scene in which man could experience a mystical union with God.

In this sense, Cross in the Mountains is an extremely prescient, perhaps even prophetic painting. Though he had created the work in the early nineteenth century, Friedrich appeared to have sensed the inevitable decline of conventional, external, moderate, everyday Christianity -- the inevitable decline that culminated in Nietzsche's declaration of God's death toward the end of the same century.

This acute awareness of the fading and weakening of external, conventional Christianity inspired Friedrich to seek new, unexplored means through which man's connection with the divine could be both maintained and intensified. Instead of reviving traditional motifs, Friedrich embarked on a mystical path -- the path of individual free choice separated from all Christian externals save for the image of Christ Himself. 

Cross in the Mountains is an important painting because it depicts what Christianity comes down to now. For me. For you. For everyone who desires to become a serious and genuine follower of Christ. It comes down to a decision that does not depend on any externals whatsoever, but a decision that comes from within the innermost parts of ourselves -- a decision inspired by gazing up at a cross upon a summit.

A decision inspired by the crucified Jesus who calls upon you to believe on Him, to take the risk and rise above the objectified, external world, ascend the mountain, and join Him at the peak. Nothing more is needed. In fact, anything else would be too much. 

The kind of mystical union with God Friedrich depicts here is available to anyone at anytime. It may soon become the only kind of authentic union available. It doesn't require mountains, mauve and gray washes of sky, or summit crosses. All it requires your free commitment to believe on Jesus and the direct knowledge that God also believes on you.

​Do that, with love, and the mystical union is sealed. Now and forever.     
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8 Comments
Blitz Kreig
3/8/2022 21:15:43

Nice masonic symbolism in the frame.

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Francis Berger
3/8/2022 21:34:47

@ Blitz Kreig - Yeah, interesting that you see it only as masonic symbolism considering that the use of it predates freemasonry.

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jorgen
3/8/2022 23:42:22

I see masonic pyramid eye in that art.

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Blitz Kreig
3/9/2022 06:57:38

Let's here see..
- two pillars - check
- illuminated triangle - check
- all seeing eye - check
- square and compass (in the rocks holding up the intentionally elongated cross) - check

And I don't even want to speculate what the babies with wings are supposed to represent. But yeah, it can't be masonic because it wasn't called freemasonry back then. Sorry Francis, you knock it out of the park more often then not, but I'll have to disagree with you in this one. This is the same symbolism and imagery we see in many system signs and symbols today, except it was more covert back then.

https://timedoesnotrest.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/caspar-david-friedrich/

"Besides that, Friedrich became a Freemason in 1807 – members of this secret society were persecuted during the Nazi regime."

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Francis Berger
3/9/2022 07:48:14

@ Blitz Kreig - To reiterate my point, I find it interesting that you focus on the symbolism in the frame rather than on the painting and the content of my post, which suggests that you feel the symbols in the frame trump the content of both the painting and the content of this post.

Regarding freemasonry, I think we need sober assessments of historical freemasonry, which was probably far less sinister and evil than current interpretations suggest. I see freemasonry in the 18th and 19th centuries as a creature of the Enlightenment, and representative of the positive and negative aspects contained therein -- more specifically, representative of a certain mode of consciousness, especially among the elite of that time period, that rejected many conventional/traditional tenets and factors.

As is the case with every organization and institution over the past century or so, freemasonry has become totally corrupted and wholly aligned with evil. That is undeniable.

I am not a mason and do not support freemasonry, but I am extremely wary of the drug store variety interpretations of freemasonry that even illiterate high school kids know by heart. The kind that starts with Albert Pike and inevitably leads up to photographs of Jay Z and other celebrities giving the all-knowing eye or one eye symbol in Coca-Cola ads.

If we discount as "evil" everything even remotely associated with freemasonry, then we essentially discount the past three centuries of Western history as nothing but evil, which is the position of many traditional Roman Catholics who delight in heaping all the evil of the past five centuries onto freemasonry.

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bruce charlton
3/9/2022 09:18:09

It seems to be a major part of Romanticism to experience (or imagine) for oneself - as the deepest means of knowing. My feeling is that this is not meant to be a crucifix in the German hills, but Christ himself being crucified in the German hills - and crucified alone. I would guess that this was how CDF himself experienced the crucifixion in imagination. In other words, the picture probably is not iconography *at all*; but instead a depiction of the direct imagination/ experience (or re-experience) of the crucifixion in the mind of CDF.

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Francis Berger
3/9/2022 09:33:37

@ Bruce - "a depiction of the direct imagination/ experience"

Good! This is what Christianity comes down to now as far as I'm concerned.

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David Llewellyn Dodds
3/11/2022 02:03:55

Thanks for this, quite new to me (though I love his paintings)!

For what it is worth, the German Wikipedia article, "Tetschener Altar", gives a quotation from Friedrich on the painting (citing a 2006 edition of his letters) - which seems badly translated in an article quoted by the English Wikipedia article:

Wohl ist beabsichtigt das Jesus Christus, ans Holz geheftet, hier der sinkenden Sonne zugekehrt ist, als das Bild des ewigen allbelebenden Vaters. Es starb mit Jesu Lehre eine alte Welt, die Zeit, wo Gott der Vater unmittelbar wandelte auf Erden; wo er sprach zu Cain: Warum ergrimmest du, und warum verstellen sich deine Gebärden? wo er unter Donner und Blitz die Gesetztafeln gab; wo er sprach zu Abrahm: Zeuch deine Schuhe aus; denn es ist heilig Land, wo auf du stehest! Diese Sonne sank, und die Erde vermochte nicht mehr zu fassen das scheidende Licht. Da leuchtet, vom reinsten edelsten Metall, der Heiland am Kreuz, im Gold des Abendroths, und wiederstrahlet so im gemilderten Glanz auf Erden. Auf einem Felsen steht aufgerichtet das Kreuz, unerschütterlich fest, wie unser Glaube an Jesum Christum. Immer grün durch alle Zeiten während stehen die Tannen ums Kreuz, gleich unserer Hoffnung auf ihn, den Gekreuzigten.

Sadly, he does not say anything about the "five pillar-like rays", only the central three of which had caught my eye, before reading your post, and had reminded me of the traditional iconography of Christ with a three-rayed cruciform nimbus. I wonder if they have any relation to the five angels in the victory palms of the frame, which he designed?

His reading of Biblical actions and words in terms of God the Father seems curious and unconvincing to me, and I miss the two men crucified with Him.

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