The Castle of Heidelberg
- Date
- 1852
- Material
- Oil on canvas mounted on board
- made in
- Düsseldorf, Nordrhein-Westfalen state, Germany, Europe
- depicts
- Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg state, Germany, Europe
- Classification
- Paintings
- Collection
- American Art
- Current Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- 21 1/2 x 26 in. (54.6 x 66 cm)
framed: 29 1/8 x 33 1/4 in. (74 x 84.5 cm) - Credit Line
- Bequest of Alice S. O'Hern
- Rights
- Public Domain
- Object Number
- 15:1984
NOTES
A towering tree frames a picturesque view of Heidelberg Castle ruins, a popular attraction for artists and writers in the 19th century. Germans knew the castle as the ancestral home of the Electors of the Palatinate, high-ranking rulers in the Holy Roman Empire. The Empire lasted over a thousand years (800/962–1806), and its territory encompassed present-day Germany, offering an important precedent for later unification.
Charles Ferdinand Wimar made this painting four years after Germany’s failed republican revolution in 1848. German by birth but raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Wimar presented the castle as a ruined artifact of Germany’s distant imperial past.
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