A number of the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich have become icons of German
Romanticism and, beyond that, exemplars of a Romantic sensibility that could
span linguistic and national boundaries and did find expression in the arts,
literature and the sciences. Following the lead of the art historian Timothy
Mitchell, who years ago showed the important ways in which the geognosy of
Abraham Gottlob Werner resonated in a number of Friedrich’s paintings, notably
Die Hochgebirge and Der Watzmann (Timothy Mitchell, “Caspar David Friedrich’s Der Watzmann: German Romantic Landscape Painting and Historical Geology,” The Art Bulletin, 66 no. 3, 1984, 452-464), my paper will explore the interactions of
geognosy and art in Friedrich’s The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (Der Wanderer
über dem Nebelmeer). The image of a solitary figure standing on a rocky peak,
facing away from the viewer and looking out over a fog-bound landscape
interspersed with rocky summits, for which the outlines of higher summits serve
as a backdrop, is among the most recognizable of Friedrich’s work. Besides
considering a number of geognostic motifs in The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog,
my paper will also explore the ways in which this painting reflects the growing
importance that geognosy was having in the German-speaking nations (and the
emerging senses of German nationhood), and the growth of “popular science” in a
context where science was rapidly becoming “professionalized.”