Arnold Böcklin's Mondscheinlandschaft Mit Ruine

With a ruin standing strong in the night, a lone traveler passes by, using the light behind the never-ending barrage of clouds as his only compass. The twisted trees find home in the grassy plain bordering the trodden path to the right as the darkness closes in and a peaceful desolation takes into place. A dark and foreboding oil painting on canvas, Arnold Böcklin’s Mondscheinlandschaft mit Ruine, or Ruins in Moonlit Landscape, capture and illuminate the idea of the picturesque beauty of darkness, and the endurance of nature over the brevity of human existence. Born in Basel, Switzerland in 1827, Böcklin was an influential painter both in his time and in subsequent art movements, creating pieces that have be praised by the king of Bavaria, …show more content…
Although the piece has the movement and the situation of shadows and light that are necessary in creating a realistic, three-dimensional aspect to the image, they are placed incorrectly in terms of reality. From the angle that light is coming from and the angles of the shadows on the ruins, a moon should either be seen at the top right-hand corner of the image or should be just off of the canvas, but besides the slight orange hue of the sky, there is no indication that there is a moon present in that direction at all. Instead, the light is only around the ruins, with lighter section in the sky suggesting the presence of the moon behind the clouds directly above the ruins. As an attention-grabbing element, the light does well to bring the viewer’s eye to the ruins, but from a realistic standpoint, it is entirely wrong as even light coming from directly above with the density of the clouds would illuminate everything in the area. Yet the variability of the light placement and reality does not affect the growth of the forest and the brush. The natural elements still stand as they should, growing and thriving in the familiarity of the vast expanse of land. The traveler, on the other hand, is dependent on the specific directions and placement of the moon in the darkness of the night. At the same time, in its fictionality, Böcklin is giving the piece its own personality that emphasizes the desolation and loneliness of its content as a type of memento mori. Nature, like time, is a constant force through both real and fictional worlds that affects the actions of man, but is not hindered by man himself. In the case of the traveler, there is no doubt a destruction waiting in the darkness of the path, a civilization for a destination that is sure to