Two Roads to Awe

Romantic painters chased the same feeling by opposite routes. John Martin went big, staging biblical catastrophes at enormous scale — visions of divine destruction so spectacular that crowds packed his exhibitions. Caspar David Friedrich went quiet, placing a lone figure against fog and mountains to evoke solitary confrontation with nature's indifference.

Both strategies aimed at the same target: making viewers feel the terrifying insignificance of human existence against forces that operate without reference to human needs.