Monastery Cemetry in Snow | Caspar David Friedrich | 1818 18th Century "Harlequin and Death" (1907) by

"Harlequin and Death" (1907) by Konstantin Somov is a symbolist painting that contrasts the whimsical and the macabre

offering an essential guide to one of the most haunting and inventive imaginations in Western art

with towering flames engulfing the city

The painting is notable for its simple

The scene is imagined with medieval armor and weaponry

Monastery Cemetry in Snow | Caspar David Friedrich | 1818 18th Century "Harlequin and Death" (1907) byThis work is a later copy after an original painting by Caspar David Friedrich, the original having been destroyed during the Second World War. The painting depicts a heavy winter sky, the snow covered cemetery lies in deep silence, broken only by the slow movement of a small church processional toward the ruined monastery. The Gothic arches rise like a hollowed skeleton, framed by bare, twisted trees that press in from the darkness. At the entrance,