The Siege (Defense of a Church Courtyard During the Thirty Years’ War)

Lessing, one of Schadow’s most talented pupils at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, is considered the pioneer of Düsseldorf landscape painting. The Siege is a successful synthesis of history and landscape painting and is regarded as one of his masterpieces. In an atmospheric stormy landscape (which bears witness to his studies prepared outdoors in the Eifel region), beneath a sombre sky a dramatic battle ensues. On a ridge, arquebusiers and lansquenets defend a monastery that has already in part been burnt down. In the foreground, we are readied for the tragic overall mood as there a monk gives a dying soldier the Last Sacraments. The wealth of narrative detail is embedded in a clearly structured composition. Along the curved diagonal of the fortress wall our eyes are led into the broad countryside. According to Wolfgang Müller von Königswinter, this scene (a copy was produced as an engraving for Badischer Kunstverein in 1881) captures the sense of disaster in the year of the 1848 Revolution. (Bettina Baumgärtel)