The Painter 240 Friedrich worked on The Cross in the Mountains during a period after 1805, when two altarpiece projects became important to him: Kosegarten’s commission for the riverside chapel in Vitt on the island of Rügen, which ultimately went to Philipp Otto Runge but remained unfinished,7 and the altar of the Marienkirche in Greifswald, over which a copy of Correggio’s Nativity by Friedrich August von Klinkowström was installed in 1811.8 In Vitt as in Greifswald, King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden played an important role in the planning of the projects – for Western Pomerania would remain Swedish until 1815. This also explains Theresia von Thun-Hohenstein’s remark in a letter to her mother: “Sadly, the beautiful cross is not to be 2 Caspar David Friedrich View over the Elbe Valley 1807 | CAT 96 had! The dutiful Norseman has painted it in honour of his king […].”9 Apparently, Friedrich, who saw himself first and foremost as Pomeranian and therefore as a Swedish subject, envisioned the staunchly Protestant Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden as the dedicatee of The Cross in the Mountains10 and therefore initially did not want to sell it to the Thun-Hohensteins. However, with the invasion of Finland by Russian troops in February 1808, the political situation became precarious for the Swedish king and Friedrich saw the prospects for the work’s original intended purpose dwindle, and so he resolved to sell it to the newlywed couple Theresia and Franz Anton von Thun-Hohenstein after all,11 even though they
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