Le Cœur des Andes

Frederic Edwin Church had read the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, who described how the Andes stacked every climate on Earth from tropical valley to frozen peak within a few miles, and he went to Ecuador twice to see it. This canvas is the result, a single view that runs from palms and orchids in the warm foreground up to the snow of Chimborazo. When he showed it in New York in 1859 he did not just hang it. He set it in a frame built like a window, darkened the room, lit it with hidden gas jets, and handed visitors opera glasses so they could wander through it. More than 12,000 people paid a quarter each to come. It made Church the most famous landscape painter in the country. Look closely at the left middle distance and you will find a small clearing with a cross, two tiny figures stopped there to pray.