Construction of the Devil's Bridge
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| Construction of the Devil's Bridge |
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| Carl Blechen , around 1833 |
| Oil painting on canvas |
| 77.8 x 104.5 cm |
| New Pinakothek , Munich |
Building the Devil's Bridge is a painting by Carl Blechen from around 1833. It depicts the construction site of the second Devil's Bridge over the Reuss in the Schöllenen Gorge on the Gotthard in the Swiss canton of Uri in a romantic atmosphere . The picture was taken after Blechen's trip to Italy, which ended in autumn 1829. It belongs to the Federal Republic of Germany and has been on permanent loan to the Neue Pinakothek in Munich since 1966 . Due to renovation work there, the painting is currently on display in the Alte Pinakothek .
description
The painting is executed as an oil painting on canvas, has the dimensions 77.8 × 104.5 cm and bears the inventory number L. 1039.
Around 1830 this picture was part of a diorama by Karl Wilhelm Gropius , although it is not certain whether it was exactly this picture or a different version. The book printer Rudolf Ludwig Decker then bought the painting from the artist. His heirs kept it until 1911, around 1925 it was in the Hans Holleander art dealer in Dresden. In 1930 it was owned by the Michovius family in Berlin, then by the cloth manufacturer Ludwig Polscher in Cottbus. After 1940 it was sold through the Berlin art dealer Carl Nicolai for a special order from Linz . Since then it has been in German state ownership. There were also several colored sketches for the picture (one of which was owned by HFW Brose and later moved to the Oskar Reinhart Museum ).
The painting is one of Blechen's major works. It shows the construction of the second Devil's Bridge over the Reuss in the Schöllenenschlucht on the Gotthard. The old pass road on the well-known north-south alpine crossing through the wild gorge was always a traffic bottleneck, which made a trip by stagecoach very difficult in the early 19th century. Blechen depicts the recently completed brick arch with its wooden falsework in effective theatrical lighting . In front of it you can see the previous building, which was badly damaged in the Second Coalition War , then poorly repaired and later no longer cope with the increased traffic. On this side of the Reuss in the foreground and on the right edge of the picture, figures are placed as staffage showing the workers taking a break. On the right ramp of the bridge there is a kind of construction crane that is shaped like a gallows. On the left in front of the dark rock face there is a pole, also illuminated by the sun, to mark a path that leads up to the blue triangle of the sky.
Background and interpretation
With his trip to Italy from 1828 to 1829, Blechen, like many of his artist and poet colleagues, fulfilled a heartfelt wish. The trip brought him "the liberating experience of an unbound life". On this trip he sketched the motif of the wild and romantic gorge and that of the architectural arches in many works. Especially the narrow valley in the Lattari Mountains near Amalfi with its mills offered many of these motifs, which he also used in larger oil paintings. The journey back to Berlin by stagecoach led over the Gotthard Pass on October 30, 1829 . In the Schöllenen Gorge he had the opportunity to sketch the construction site of the bridge. In preparation, he created two oil sketches, after which he finally executed the painting.
The work does not just show a wild and romantic landscape, but for Blechen it is the farewell scene from Italy and thus the farewell to his paradisiacal life in the south. Again the leitmotif of the gorge is included in his work. The way through this dark gorge and over the river is his further path in life towards death, also symbolized by the gallows-shaped construction crane. Walking the path is frightening, the name of the bridge already indicates the state of mind of the painter, who later suffered from depression . The workers resting or sleeping in the foreground already hint at death. The pole in the left half of the picture shows the way to a promise of the blue sky. So it is optimistic in nature.
The rock formations and flat fragments on the left bank do not match the conditions on the Gotthard massif , Blechen may have taken the inspiration for the design from a trip to the Harz Mountains that he undertook in 1833. Therefore the dating around 1833 is plausible for this painting. The model for the rock could have been the narrow Bodetal with the Roßtrappe , where Blechen stayed in September 1833. The painter was probably inspired to compose the picture by the stage designs of Karl Friedrich Schinkel . Influences from Joseph Anton Koch are also present. Koch, who represented the idea of an ideal, sublime Roman landscape , he met in Rome at Caffè Greco and stayed in the same house as his colleague.
Diorama of the construction of the Devil's Bridge
Blechen's painting of the construction of the Devil's Bridge on St. Gotthard, or a previous version, was set up in a diorama by Karl Wilhelm Gropius in 1833. There was a review of this by Franz Kugler in the magazine Museum, Blätter für bildende Kunst :
“[...] Because even if the foreground and middle distance, namely the sharply illuminated rock path and the old and new, still under construction, Devil's Bridge are to be mentioned spatially, there is still a lack of air in front of the mighty rock walls in the background No matter how transparent it may be in the Swiss regions, the essential dividing line between near and distant objects always remains. In general, it is very doubtful to us whether landscape objects are in the same way suitable for the representations of the diorama as architectural objects. "
Kilian Heck describes the similarity between the diorama and the painting in terms of the structure and arrangement of the objects, so that for him “there is no doubt about the mutual dependency of both images.” Blechen is not mentioned as an artist in relation to the diorama, but both show Works on both the old and the new bridge and the “sharply lit rock path”. In his opinion, “a later production of the painting based on the previous diorama is also conceivable”. The diorama that was seen in August 1833 was not preserved.
Exhibitions (selection)
- May to October 1886: 58th anniversary exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts in Berlin as Devil's Bridge (Gotthardstrasse) No. 2257.
- March 8 to May 20, 2007: Views of Europe - Europe and German painting of the 19th century Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels.
- August 31 to November 4, 1990: Carl Blechen - Between Romanticism and Realism National Gallery in Berlin.
literature
- Paul Ortwin Rave (Ed.): Karl Blechen. Life, appreciation, work. Deutscher Verein für die Kunstwissenschaft, Berlin 1940 (RV 1458: oil on canvas, RV 1459: oil on paper, on wood, RV 1460: color sketch for RV 1458, oil on paper on cardboard, height 16.8 cm, width 22.7 cm).
- Peter-Klaus Schuster (Ed.): Carl Blechen. Between romance and realism. Prestel, Munich 1990, No. 59 (oil on paper, on wood, 1833) and No. 60 (oil on canvas).
- Kilian Heck : The picture as a document or as art? Franz Kugler's magazine Museum and the reviewed paintings by Carl Belchen . In: Franz Theodor Kugler: German art historian and Berlin poet . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-05-004645-7 , pp. 173-185, here 176-177 ( core.ac.uk [PDF; 7.3 MB ]).
Web links
- Construction of the Devil's Bridge pinakothek.de
- Blechen, Carl: Building the Devil's Bridge zeno.org
Individual evidence
- ^ Gender von Decker schlesischesammlungen.eu.
- ↑ Carl Blechen The construction of the Devil's Bridge schlesischesammlungen.eu.
- ↑ Gustav Parthey: Deutscher Bildersaal - directory of the oil paintings of deceased painters in all schools in Germany . Nicolai, Berlin 1863, p. 120 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
- ↑ Jutta Schenk-Sorge (p. 39) and Helmut Börsch-Supan (p. 121) in: Carl Blechen. Between romance and realism. Exhibition catalog of the Berlin National Gallery, Prestel-Verlag 1990, ISBN 3-7913-1084-4
- ^ Friederike Sack: Carl Blechens Landscapes - Investigations into the theoretical and technical genesis of works. Dissertation at the Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich 2007, pp. 95 and 101
- ^ Franz Theodor Kugler: Diorama - Berlin . In: Small writings and studies on art history . Ebner, Stuttgart 1853, p. 31 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
- ↑ Kilian Heck: The Image as a Document or as Artistic Nature? … In: Franz Theodor Kugler: German art historian and Berlin poet . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-05-004645-7 , pp. 176 .
- ↑ Communications from Berlin . In: Newspaper for the elegant world of Berlin: fashion, entertainment, art, theater . No. 154 . Janke, Berlin August 9, 1833, p. 615 ( books.google.de ).
- ↑ Anniversary exhibition of the Kgl. Academy of Arts in the state exhibition building in Berlin . Berlin 1886, p. 321 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).