Interior of St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna (c. 1810): Art, History and Details

Interior of St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna (c. 1810) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Karl Friedrich Schinkel (German, 1781–1841).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Renowned as an architect and an imaginative draftsman and painter, Schinkel was an important early practitioner of lithography, a technique invented at the end of the 18th century in Germany. Schinkel experimented with this new medium in creative ways, searching for a means to achieve tone. In order to simulate the effect of bright light illuminating the interior of Saint Stephen's Cathedral, he covered the surface of the stone with lithographic ink and then scratched out the design with a sharp tool. One of only a few impressions of this print, Interior of Saint Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna exemplifies the museum's extensive early lithography collection.

Object facts

• Title: Interior of St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna
• Date: c. 1810
• Creator attribution: Karl Friedrich Schinkel (German, 1781–1841)
• Culture: Germany, 19th century
• Type: Print
• Technique: lithograph
• Dimensions: Sheet: 46.2 x 31.5 cm (18 3/16 x 12 3/8 in.); Image: 24 x 15.8 cm (9 7/16 x 6 1/4 in.)
• Collection: PR - Lithograph
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1998.8

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Painting by 18th-century Italian Master Gaetano Gandolfi among Works Added to CMA Collection,” March 24, 1998, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.