Paesaggio invernale con chiesa

In 1811 Caspar David Friedrich painted a pair of small winter scenes and sent them, with other work, to an exhibition in Weimar. In one, a man who has thrown down his crutches props himself against a boulder before a crucifix, while the spires of a Gothic church rise out of the fog behind, stone echoing the shape of the fir trees, faith and nature drawn as one thing. Two versions of this composition survive. The one accepted without argument hangs in London. This one, in Dortmund, has long been debated — a second painting from Friedrich's own hand to some, a careful early copy to others. The snow lies unmarked except for the single track the man has left crawling to the rock.