ABSTRACT
Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841) was 44 years old when he completed the painting Blick im Griechenlands Blüte as a gift to King Friedrich Wilhelm III’s daughter Luise on her wedding day, May 21, 1825. Set in front of the Greek landscape that he, like his fellow German Philhellenic, would never visit, the View in Blossoming Greece was dedicated to the Greek polis and propounded the restoration of a culture worthy of admiration and emulation.2 The View of Greece also marked the end of two intense decades of graphic work during which Schinkel produced hundreds of travel sketches and drawings (most notably from the Italienische Reise of 1803-4), scores of set designs for the Royal Opera Theater in Berlin, and his awe-inspiring paintings now conserved at the Alte Nationalgalerie alongside other masterpieces of the Berlin Renaissance by Caspar David Friedrich and Johann Gottfried Schadow.3
