It's hard not to interpret many of these scenes as allegorical: Courbet's obsession with the medieval Chateau de Chillon, for instance, involved the brisk market for images of a tourist site, but no doubt it also involved the castle's legacy as a dungeon for political prisoners. He painted it rising from above the icy waters of Lake Geneva against the gray, backlighted Alps, and also from below, as a looming, impenetrable mass, haunted and haunting.