Near Florence 26 - 1850

Curator: Gazing at this pencil sketch, one feels an almost dreamlike stillness. Editor: Yes, a quiet observation, wouldn't you agree? It's a landscape by Friedrich Metz, titled "Near Florence," sketched in 1850. The Städel Museum is fortunate to have it. Curator: A landscape alright! More like a secret world unfolding from a single tree, isn't it? Like something I saw once while riding through Tuscany... except then there was the smell of figs, the grit of the gravel road, and well, lots of sweat. This feels distilled, purified of reality's grime. Editor: Note how Metz uses a rigorous formal structure to produce this “dreamlike” quality. The interplay of horizontal lines and varied strokes of pencil create depth and organize the space. A foreground of lush trees yields to the middle ground with distant architectural details along the horizon, all topped with a muted sky. It's composition creates a carefully calibrated viewing experience. Curator: See, for me, it's less about "calibrated viewing" and more about how he traps the fleeting feeling of a place on paper. It is funny, though, how this Italian landscape sketch was made by a German artist. Does Romanticism ever stay in one place? Editor: Perhaps that’s the entire point, a certain type of “displacement”. What do you make of the lack of strong contrasts? Its almost as though the goal wasn't the accuracy but rather eliciting something atmospheric instead… Curator: Exactly! The subtle shading transforms mundane buildings into mysterious, romantic vestiges of a lost world. That pencil – just think! – connecting him to the landscape and then transmitting it... to us, across centuries. That's the magic, isn't it? More enduring, somehow, than the actual Florence, if I'm honest. Editor: Indeed, “Near Florence” manages to evoke a unique temporal experience of place using very fundamental, elemental qualities such as the linear construction of the form and the textural materiality of pencil on paper. It's as much an artifact of perception as it is of place, wouldn’t you agree?