两个观月的男子

Caspar David Friedrich painted this Dresden version around 1819 and 1820, and there is a quiet act of defiance folded into it. Two men stand with their backs to us on a rocky path, leaning close as they watch the moon rise through the branches of a dead oak. They are wearing what Germans called old German dress, the altdeutsche Tracht. That clothing had become a badge of liberal, nationalist students, and under the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819 wearing it was effectively banned as a mark of political trouble. Friedrich knew exactly what he was doing. Showing the picture in his studio he said dryly of the two figures that they were up to demagogic intrigues. The older man leaning on the younger one's shoulder is thought to be Friedrich himself.