page_title: The Woman with the Spider's Web
hierarchical_section_title: The Woman with the Spider's Web
caption_attribution_description: Print; Prints
context_page_description: The Woman with the Spider's Web is a small 1803 print by the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, made into a woodcut by his brother Christian Friedrich, a carpenter and furniture maker, the same year.
  The image explores themes of death and the transience of life. It shows a woman sitting alone under an eerie, barren, dead tree in which the upper branches appear as if scattering crows. The lower ground is surrounded by encroaching and engulfing weeds, which reflecting her despair, seem as if about to envelope her. She rests one arm on a branch of the tree as she looks mournfully and enigmatically out towards the far distance, perhaps looking towards an uncertain future, or as has been suggested, in waiting for the return of a long lost lover.
  The image was influenced by both Albrecht Dürer's engraving Melencolia I and from characters from the romantic writings of Ludwig Tieck. It is part of a series that Christian cut from Caspar's drawings, however, Caspar appears to have been unhappy with the outcome and when asked by his brother to produce further works for transfer, he declined, writing, "ask another artist".
context_section_description: The Woman with the Spider's Web (or The Woman with the Spider's Web between Bare Trunks, German: Die Frau mit dem Spinnennetz zwischen kahlen Bäumen) is a small 1803 print by the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, made into a woodcut by his brother Christian Friedrich, a carpenter and furniture maker, the same year.
  The image explores themes of death and the transience of life. It shows a woman sitting alone under an eerie, barren, dead tree in which the upper branches appear as if scattering crows. The lower ground is surrounded by encroaching and engulfing weeds, which reflecting her despair, seem as if about to envelope her. She rests one arm on a branch of the tree as she looks mournfully and enigmatically out towards the far distance, perhaps looking towards an uncertain future, or as has been suggested, in waiting for the return of a long lost lover.
  The image was influenced by both Albrecht Dürer's engraving Melencolia I (1514) and from characters from the romantic writings of Ludwig Tieck. It is part of a series that Christian cut from Caspar's drawings, however, Caspar appears to have been unhappy with the outcome and when asked by his brother to produce further works for transfer, he declined, writing, "ask another artist".
  Original cuts of Woman with the Spider's Web are in the British Museum, London, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, amongst other locations.
caption: Woodcut on ivory wove paper after Caspar David Friedrich's The woman with the Spider's Web
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