The Woman with the Spider Web between Bare Trees (1803): Art, History and Details

The Woman with the Spider Web between Bare Trees (1803) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774–1840).

The work and its context

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

For Friedrich, landscape was the expression of spirituality and a personal connection with God. By isolating individual objects in this composition and rendering them in specific detail, such as the tree, spider web, and thistles, Friedrich gave them a heightened clarity that destabilizes the familiar and suggests a hidden, sacred significance within organic forms. The viewer’s dilemma—deciding upon the meaning and significance of the scene—is echoed by the woman herself who gazes toward the evening sky. Her pose and gesture suggest a searching awareness that evokes melancholy and suspended resolution. Surrounding her are symbols of mortality in the barren trees, thistles, a caught fly, and the setting sun. In this woodcut, Friedrich depicted for one of the first times a theme that became a leitmotif, what art historians have called "the drama of the self facing the universe."

Object facts

• Title: The Woman with the Spider Web between Bare Trees
• Date: 1803
• Creator attribution: Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774–1840)
• Culture: Germany, early 19th Century
• Type: Print
• Technique: woodcut
• Collection: PR - Woodcut
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1995.68

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “The Cleveland Museum of Art Acquires Major Works,” December 20, 1995, 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.