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Friedrich’s vision of a heavenly cathedral is set in a pointed frame reminiscent of a Romanesque church window. Although this work was inspired by part of Meissen Cathedral’s western façade, Friedrich then let his imagination run free, narrowing the proportions to heighten the impression of the cathedral striving upwards. Still in shadow at the base, it becomes lighter as it rises. The higher the spires tower into the sky, the more transparent they seem. The clouds form a diamond shape around the mysterious source of light behind the central spire.

In the foreground, a group of nine praying angels are set under a rainbow. Caspar David Friedrich meticulously rendered these figures, down to the smallest detail of their wing feathers. They are gathered around a cross emitting a bright shining light. Lances and scourges are set to their left and right – symbols of Christ’s suffering and torture.

But how can you show the divine in an image? Can art awaken a religious sentiment? Friedrich’s Cathedral expresses his own search for a visual language to convey the sacred and the holy. He found this language, on the one hand, in his scenes of the natural world, as in his painting of the Watzmann mountain, a work also on show in this room. There, the Watzmann soars up into the sky like a luminescent cathedral of nature. Here, Friedrich seeks to visualise the heavenly through architecture and Christian symbolism.