Landscape with Noah, Offering a Sacrifice of Gratitude
Artist: Joseph Anton Koch (Austrian, 1768-1839). Gottlieb Schick (German, 1776-1812)
Date: 1803
Medium: Oil on canvas
Collection: Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany
Description
Having survived the Flood, Noah and his family offer a sacrifice to God, who has created a rainbow above the land emerging from the waters as a sign of the new Covenant between him and mankind. Koch lived for over forty years in Rome. In his heroic landscape, inspired by the Sabine Hills, he carefully balances the relationship between nature and the Bible narrative. The representation of the dialogue between living creatures and nature was one of the achievements of this Romantic Classicist, who came to the fore in the nineteenth century as the founder of a new form of German landscape painting.