Gothic Cathedral Behind a Pond with Swans

Faced with a dearth of architectural commissions in French-occupied Berlin after 1806, the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel produced depictions of imagined architecture. Through these nostalgic concoctions Schinkel championed the Germanic Middle Ages by reviving a Gothic style of architecture over his more customary Neoclassical mode. Taking advantage of national sentiment, he found a market of buyers who longed for images of a simpler time. Schinkel’s own inscription from one of his contemporary lithographs could describe this work: an “attempt to express the lovely nostalgic sadness that fills the heart when the sound of the service emanates from the church.”