Morning in the Riesengebirge

In the summer of 1810 Friedrich walked the Riesengebirge, the mountains along the Bohemian border, with his friend the painter Kersting, filling sketchbooks he would draw on for the rest of his life. This is what he built from them: not a real peak but an assembled one, its summit crowned by a crucifix, with a woman reaching up toward the figure who climbs the last rocks below. The light is the real subject, thin dawn mist burning off in layers until the far ranges dissolve into pale air. A year after he showed it in Dresden, the King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm III, bought it and hung it in his palace on Unter den Linden in Berlin. The cross stands where a real summit cross might, iron against the brightening sky.