Prison for the National Gallery

29/6/25 - Acquisition - London, National Gallery - The window is a topos in painting to which the Fondation de l’Hermitage in Lausanne devoted an exhibition in 2013, spanning from the Renaissance to the present day (see the article), while the Metropolitan Museum in New York, in 2010, focused on the 19th century [1], with works by Léon Cogniet, Johan Christian Dahl, Caspar David Friedrich, and also Carl Gustav Carus. The latter returned several times to this motif, which he painted in various forms: in a pointed arch in a ruined Gothic monastery, equipped with a balcony in a room overlooking the port of Naples, or a palatial loggia over the bay lit by the moon. Even the woman seated in her gondola, drifting on the Elbe, seems to be gazing through a window. While it most often opens…