Tetschener Altar (Das Kreuz im Gebirge)

Friedrich showed this in his Dresden studio at Christmas of 1808, and it started an argument. It is a landscape, a crucifix on a rocky summit among fir trees, caught in the last red light. But he framed it as an altarpiece, meant to stand where a religious painting normally would. That was the provocation. A critic named Basilius von Ramdohr published a long attack, insisting that a mere landscape had no business on an altar, that scenery could not carry a sacred idea. Friedrich's friends fired back, and the quarrel made his name known across Germany. What he had done was quietly radical for its moment, letting rocks, trees and evening light do the work a church usually gave to figures of Christ and the saints. The cross itself is turned away from us, catching the sun on its far side.