A Prayer Without Words

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is an art historian, essayist and translator. She graduated with a degree in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and is the author of a recently published book entitled “Ten Kraj” [This Country].

A tale of silence, an icon of human solitude in the face of the forces of nature, or perhaps a memento of the great artist? Take a journey through the maze of interpretations of one of the most famous paintings in history.

I come down from the mountains,
The valley dims, the sea roars.
I wander silently and am somewhat unhappy,
And my sighs always ask "Where?"

This is the lamenting of the Wanderer from a song composed by 19-year-old Franz Schubert to the words of G.P. Schmidt. The stranger looks for a spiritual home everywhere, but is condemned to wander forever. Schubert’s music was composed in 1821. Three years earlier, Caspar David Friedrich painted a picture that often illustrates the recordings of the Austrian composer’s song. Wanderer above the Sea of Fog also often ends up on the covers of books about German Romantic painting. It shows

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Anna Arno:

is an art historian, essayist and translator. She graduated with a degree in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and is the author of a recently published book entitled “Ten Kraj” [This Country].

Translation: Anna Błasiak

Publish date: 06.12.2019

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Anna Arno:

is an art historian, essayist and translator. She graduated with a degree in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and is the author of a recently published book entitled “Ten Kraj” [This Country].

They helped artists who were trying to find a visible form for supernatural phenomena. They allowed for the introduction of emotions and fantasy into a rational space. They inspired the imagination. It seems that lying on your back and staring into the clouds can also help you to understand painting.

Art historian Chiara Frugoni has studied Giotto’s Franciscan series in the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi for a few dozen years. But it was only in 2011, during the renovation of the frescoes, that she climbed the scaffolding. She suddenly noticed a devil-shaped cloud in the scene of Saint Francis’s death. A profile with a hook nose and a sinister smile is quite distinct. But it was missed earlier even by the experts; we usually see things that we expect to see… A demon is fighting against angels and obstructs a soul’s journey to heaven. Perhaps the Satanic face in the clouds is a mischievous joke of the medieval artist. Up until now, it was thought that Andrea Mantegna was the first who hid figures in the clouds in the second half of the 15th century. In the St. Sebastian of Vienna, he placed a cloudy rider in the left upper corner. Armed with a sickle to cut through the cloud, he was sometimes identified with the Roman god Saturn; the symbol of the devastating power of time.

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In the Service of Clouds

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