Cattedrale gotica sull'acqua

Schinkel was really an architect, and this cathedral was never built. He invented it, stacking towers and spires he had admired in Cologne, Prague and Milan onto a single island in a river. He painted it in 1813, the year Prussia and its neighbours rose to drive Napoleon's armies out of the German lands. In that moment the Gothic cathedral had become a patriotic dream. Cologne's own great church had stood half-finished for centuries, and completing it stood for a nation pulling itself together. So this glowing evening scene is partly a wish. The setting sun burns through the openwork of the towers, and down on the embankment small figures of every rank gather at the water, looking up at a building that existed only in his mind.