Travelers at the Rock Arch in the Limestone Mountains of the River Elbe

Travelers at the Rock Arch in the Limestone Mountains of the River Elbe

Johann Moritz Gottfried Jentzsch

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jentzsch, a landscape specialist active at the Dresden court in the beginning of the nineteenth century, depicted tourists visiting a natural attraction in the Uttewalder Valley known as the Felsentor ("rock arch"). A number of German Romantic artists sketched the dramatic spot, a narrow passage between two high cliffs. In this sheet, two gentlemen assist their ladies in crossing a precarious bridge of planks as another man examines the remarkable rock formations through his spectacles.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Travelers at the Rock Arch in the Limestone Mountains of the River ElbeTravelers at the Rock Arch in the Limestone Mountains of the River ElbeTravelers at the Rock Arch in the Limestone Mountains of the River ElbeTravelers at the Rock Arch in the Limestone Mountains of the River ElbeTravelers at the Rock Arch in the Limestone Mountains of the River Elbe

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.