During his first journey to Italy in 1803, Karl Friedrich Schinkel found himself in the coastal region of Istria, where he visited the seaside town of Piran. There, something caught his eye—the cathedral by the sea. He marveled at it, saying: "On a rock stretching from the city into the sea stands the grand cathedral, with its tall tower casting a majestic presence" (K. F. Schinkel, Reisen nach Italien, Berlin 1979, p. 38).

A decade later, in 1813, Schinkel began a series of cathedral paintings with Gothic Cathedral by the Water (National Gallery, Inv.-Nr. A III 842). Two years after that, he created Gothic Church on a Rock by the Sea. In this painting, a group of noblemen in medieval attire rides toward a distant harbor. They pass by a Gothic monument, a nod to the Hallenser Betsäule of 1455. From the sea blows a fierce wind, whipping through the scene. Above, a cathedral rises from the rock, as though born from the stone itself. The sun, low in the sky, hides behind the grand structure, casting a radiant glow around its delicate spires.

Schinkel’s cathedral paintings echo the political and spiritual state of Germany during the Wars of Liberation. During these times, the artist developed a fondness for medieval Germanic themes and Gothic architecture, a style once believed to be of German origin. In fact, it was in the same year this painting was created, 1815, that the Berlin banker Joachim Heinrich Wilhelm Wagener began his art collection with this very work. A copy of the same painting, made by an unknown artist from Schinkel's era, now rests in private hands.