Vision of the Cross
date: label: Date
content: 1860–85
name: label: Artist
content: Frederic Edwin Church, American, 1826–1900
notes: label: Catalogue Status
content: Research in Progress
label: Description
content: Landscape sketch showing an imagined scene of a metaphorical landscape. Divided between a barren and a mountainous landscape, this work may be a continuation of Thomas Cole's unfinished "The Cross and the World" series, which symbolically represents the spiritual and earthly paths through life. Here, two figures walk beside each other in the foreground at lower right. Beyond them, an immense, craggy, and dark mountain range in the middle distance divides the composition between an empty and featureless landscape at left and a glowing, mountainous landscape at right. Loosely rendered, the foreground appears to be covered in snow with a group of animals or perhaps bushes at lower left. This flat terrain gives way to an expansive, dark valley at left, above which a luminous Christian cross floats. Its blue glow illuminates the hazy, cloudy atmosphere around it. At right, warm, brown clouds hang above a golden glowing opening in what appears to be a dark, rugged mountain range. Natural features at right are broadly articulated.
place: label: made in
content: USA
setName: label: See more items in
content: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum Collection
label: See more items in
content: Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design Department
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Louis P. Church
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 1917-4-254-b
objectType: label: Type
content: figures
label: Object Name
content: Drawing
label: Type
content: Drawing
objectRights: label: Restrictions & Rights
content: CC0
physicalDescription: label: Medium
content: Brush and oil paint on off-white paperboard
label: Dimensions
content: 18 × 25.5 cm (7 1/16 × 10 1/16 in.)