Slabs of pack ice pile up into a jagged tower under a pale sky, and only slowly do we notice the hull of a crushed ship. Friedrich never saw the Arctic; he made oil studies of ice floes on the Elbe and probably knew of Parry's polar expeditions. Radical in its bareness, the picture baffled viewers and was still unsold at his death.
Look closer
Find the wrecked ship, half-swallowed by the ice on the right. The foreground slabs rise like a staircase toward the summit.
Looks like this
Compared by a vision model
