The Language of Creation

"Caspar David Friedrich in his Studio,"
Georg Friedrich Kersting, 1819

Christmas Day, 1807. The Count of Thun and his family fought blustery winds on their way to their private chapel at Tetschen castle, Bohemia. This year's religious pageantry was made all the more spectacular by a new addition to the sanctuary. There, in place of the old, ponderous altar-piece stood a newly-finished masterwork. A glinting frame enrounded a painting of Calvary reimagined in an Alpine setting, craggy and crowned by firs. The cross itself stood silhouetted by the brilliant pink hues of a setting sun. This was The Cross on the Mountains, the first major work in what was to be the long and brilliant career of German painter Caspar David Friedrich.

This painting was not just an expression of faith, it was a way for the Thun family to show a cosmopolitan streak. Friedrich’s work was part of a fashionable new movement that was attempting to wash the Enlightenment out of Western Europe. The previous century's overreaching search for rational truth had left the earth a barren wasteland through its insatiable desire to force all knowledge inside of men’s heads. Mysteries and miracles that didn’t conform to formulas had been rejected. For the first time in centuries, Christianity had been publicly attacked. The artists in this new school styled themselves “romantics.” By depicting the inexplicable, the beautiful, and most of all, nature in its glory, they sought to free men from bondage to their minds. Others, chief among them Caspar David Friedrich, painted to remind men that it was not just truth that could be found throughout all of creation, but the truth of the Christian God.

The Cross on the Mountains drew its most vehement criticism, not from Deistic intellectuals, but from a most unlikely source: a fellow Christian. That Christian was the aptly named Basilius von Ramdohr. Unlike Friedrich, von Ramdohr was born and bred among the upper classes of German society. He had acquired a reputation as a conservative lawyer and defender of traditional German values, which led to a career as a cultural critic. With a hint of contempt, no doubt, von Ramdohr went to see Friedrich’s much talked about "romantic" piece when it was on special display. He was deeply unsettled by the painting, so much so, in fact, that he wrote a painstakingly long refutation of the ideas he saw represented in it. He objected that the pine trees had been illustrated to the point of painting each needle. The way the light was rendered was against “all the rules of optics.” And what of landscape paintings themselves? Surely nature itself can contain no explicit meaning and is improper in a church. The rock was rendered poorly, a “most strident contrast to the bright sky, without any transition or harmony.” Perhaps worst of all, in von Ramdohr's opinion, the cross was not located in the center of the painting, and Jesus was not facing the viewer – and surely this would convey the wrong message to worshipers..

With his fledgling reputation at stake, Friedrich was forced to respond. His answer? “Jesus Christ, nailed to the tree, is turned here towards the sinking sun, the image of the eternal, life-giving father. With Jesus’ teachings, an old world dies – that time when God the Father moved directly on the earth. This sun sank and the earth was not able to grasp the departing light any longer. There shines forth in the gold of the evening light the purest, noble metal of the Savior’s figure on the cross, which thus reflects the earth in a softened glow. The cross stands erect on a rock, unshakeably firm like our faith in Jesus Christ. The firs stand around the cross, evergreen, enduring through all ages, like the hopes of man in Him, the crucified.”

Unfortunately, it is very easy for us Christians to make the same mistake von Ramdohr did. In our very desire to keep the Gospel pure, it is tempting to keep our artists in the shadows. We are prone to confusing convention with the Gospel; to thinking that a change in style means a change in substance. Can God only speak through us when we make sure that two pieces of wood are at the exact center of our painting like von Ramdohr wanted? The Bible tells us that God can speak through donkeys, rocks, burning bushes and David’s harp-playing. We forget that though symbols may change, Christ himself can still remain at the center of the work. The greatest stories of salvation are usually told, not through hackneyed altar-calls, but through metaphors. Jesus’ parables are prime examples of this. And what is nature but a majestic metaphor? By depicting Creation in a way that's good and beautiful (Philippians 4:8), we can challenge peoples' deepest beliefs. A God who's evident through the physical world challenges today's naturalists in a way they can't respond to. On the other hand, to deny nature’s revelation of God like von Ramdohr did is to deny what God called “good.” Like the Apostle Paul before his conversion, this man was an intellectual who thought he was advancing the kingdom of God by purging it of false revelation. It turned out that what they were both calling false was God's voice. What place do landscape paintings have in church? Friedrich showed in his response what the psalmist declared long before in chapter 19: "The heavens declare the glory of the Lord; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge."