281 25 | Detail Maria Körber “HEAD AND HEART AND HAND” TECHNICAL FINDINGS IN THE CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH PAINTINGS AT THE ALBERTINUM IN DRESDEN “Felicity [of style] is managing to unite head and heart and hand.”1 With these words, Caspar David Friedrich described an artist’s ideal. The triumvirate of skills embodied by “head”, “heart” and “hand” also seems key to his own art. These sentiments are echoed in reworded form in numerous other passages in Friedrich’s writings, confirming the thrust of the quotation. Friedrich accorded the greatest importance to the “heart”, which he took to also stand for “sensation”, “feeling” and “soul”.2 He prioritised the individual creative force of an artist when he wrote: “A picture must not be invented but felt.”3 The “head” is where Friedrich located “design” and “composition” and thus the understanding of the effects of aesthetic principles, which he saw as “clearcut crutches”4 that served a necessary auxiliary function. Among these “crutches” were, for example, the use of linear and aerial perspective, colour contrasts or those rules of composition derived from branches of mathematics such as geometry and proportion. The two spheres of “heart” and “head” have been examined in detail in the literature on Friedrich’s work. By contrast, comparatively little research has thus far been devoted to the “hand”, which Friedrich associated with “dexterity”, “brushwork” (Pinselfertigkeit) and “craftsmanship” (Handwerk).5 To close this gap, the following questions need to be answered by examining the originals:6 Which supports did Friedrich use and how were they prepared? What kind of underdrawings did he use? What tools and technical aids were used and can any traces of them be found in the paintings? Which colourants were on Friedrich’s palette and how was the paint applied (fig. 1)?
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