Caspar david friedrich most famous work

Friedrich's first major painting came at the age of 34. The Cross in the Mountains, now known as the The Tetschen Altar (Gemäldegalerie, Dresden), was an altarpiece panel exhibited in 1808.

The work met with controversy, but it was his first painting to gain wide appraisal; for the first time in Christian art, a pure landscape was the panel of an altarpiece. It depicts the crucified Christ in profile at the top of a mountain, alone, surrounded by nature.

The cross rises highest in the composition, but is viewed obliquely and at a distance.

Self-portrait painting

The mountain symbolizes an immovable faith, while the fir trees represent hope. The artist and critic Basilius von Ramdohr published a lengthy article rejecting Friedrich's use of landscape in such a context; he wrote that it would be "a veritable presumption, if landscape painting were to sneak into the church and creep onto the altar".

Rahmdohr was fundamentally asking whethe