By the Lake of Uri

Calame painted this arm of Lake Lucerne in 1849, a year after Switzerland had remade itself into a single federal state under a new constitution, and just after the short civil war of 1847 that preceded it. Of all the country's lakes he chose the Urnersee, the stretch of water most bound up with the nation's founding story. On the slope above its western shore lies the Rutli, the meadow where, by legend, the first three cantons swore the oath in 1291 that began the old Confederation. The far shore carries the little chapel to William Tell. Calame keeps the human history almost out of sight and lets the water and the steep walls above it carry the weight. In his day the Rutli meadow could still be reached only from the lake.