Woman before the Rising Sun shows a silhouette of a woman standing before an apocalyptic sky. Her back faces the viewer, arms raised as if to embrace the sun. Beyond the dark foreground, you can dimly make out a green field meeting gentle hills. A couple of trees barely poke above an uneven horizon, and faint rays of light highlight what appears to be a headdress and sleeves that puff pompously over the woman’s shoulders.
But in this work, which was created from 1818-20, German painter Caspar David Friedrich is almost drawing attention to what you can’t see — the brilliance of the sun on the woman’s face and the finer details about the landscape she’s admiring. What is arguably the most striking feature of the painting, however, is the sky ablaze with brilliant golden-orange hues.
Interpretations of the piece vary, and include everything from a display of becoming one with nature to religious devotion. But scientists analyzing the work say there’s more to the painting than meets the eye. A catastrophic natural disaster that happened just a couple of years before Friedrich put a brush to canvas was likely the inspiration for the dramatic sky in the artwork.
In April 1815, a volcano called Mount Tambora exploded and killed an estimated 10,000 people in Indonesia. To this day, it’s the largest known eruption in recorded human history. The effects were devastating, and spewed ash and other aerosols spread around the globe, blocking solar radiation.
