The Cleveland Museum of Art
Collection Online as of April 19, 2024
Outer Staircase of a Gothic Ruin
1830
(German, 1787–1837)
Sheet: 24.1 x 16.8 cm (9 1/2 x 6 5/8 in.); Image: 23.2 x 15.2 cm (9 1/8 x 6 in.)
Catalogue raisonné: Trost 195
Location: not on view
Did You Know?
Gothic architecture, the type seen in this drawing, was associated with Germany based on a false assumption that a Germanic tribe, the Goths, had originated the style.Description
Rejecting the preference for the landscape and architecture of Italy, as seen in the work of many of his contemporaries, Domenico Quaglio portrayed the buildings of his native Germany. Here, Quaglio depicted a man, woman, and child who are dwarfed by the immense scale of a Gothic cathedral’s ruined arch, within which the figures appear. Overrun by vines and set within a dense forest, the architecture signifies the magnitude of God in the Christian faith and the smallness of mankind.- Trost, Brigitte. Domenico Quaglio, 1787-1837: Monographie und Werkverzeichnis. Munich: Prestel, 1973. Mentioned: p. 138, no. 195b; Reproduced: p. 55, pl. VII
- Stories From Storage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 7-May 16, 2021).Nature Sublime: Landscapes from the 19th Century. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 15-November 14, 2004).The German Tradition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 27-June 27, 1993).Eastward from the Rhine: Romanticism to Abstraction, 1800-1925. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 12-September 9, 1984).Year in Review: 1980. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (June 24-July 19, 1981).
- {{cite web|title=Outer Staircase of a Gothic Ruin|url=false|author=Domenico Quaglio|year=1830|access-date=19 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}
Source URL:
https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1980.218