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Phillip Otto Runge’s large-scale, four-part print series, Tageszeiten (Times of Day), is a landmark of German Romantic printmaking, capturing the “new art” promoted by Runge and his contemporary, Caspar David Friedrich, one rooted in a more personal and spiritual response to nature. Runge presents allegories of nature as a means to understand God and the sublime on earth. His four-part series represents not only the four times of day but also the seasons and the stages of human life, while contrasting eternal time with human time through various literary and religious references. Viewing the series from Morning to Night, seedlings emerge from the earth, bloom, decay, and die. Young spirits or children are born, mature, and grow old, eventually entering a sleep reminiscent of death. A female figure appearing in two scenes, possibly Mother Nature, inspires abundance and then embraces its decline, suggesting nature’s continuity despite human mortality. In each plate, Runge contrasts eternal time with human time, or spirituality with physicality, by contrasting the iconography in the borders with that in the centers.
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