Caspar David Friedrich - Wanderer above the sea of fog

The ''Rückenfigur'' (literally "back-figure") is a compositional device in

painting Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ...

graphic art A category of fine art, graphic art covers a broad range of visual artistic expression, typically two-dimensional, i.e. produced on a flat surface.

photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed ...

and

film A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

. A person is seen from behind in the foreground of the image, contemplating the view before them, and is a means by which the viewer can identify with the image's figure and then recreate the space to be conveyed. It is commonly associated with German Romantic painting and particularly the landscape painter

Caspar David Friedrich Caspar David Friedrich (5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840) was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscape ...

. The ''Rückenfigur'' motif dates to antiquity and has since been employed in many different eras and styles of art. Before Friedrich, such figures were not generally the subject of the work.

Giotto Giotto di Bondone (; – January 8, 1337), known mononymously as Giotto ( , ) and Latinised as Giottus, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence during the Late Middle Ages. He worked during the Gothic/Proto-Renaissance period. Giot ...

's ''Lamentation of Christ'' (1300s) is any early example of non-subject figures turned from the viewer. The ''Rückenfigur'' may also take the form of

staffage In painting, staffage () are the human and animal figures depicted in a scene, especially a landscape, that are not the primary subject matter of the work. Typically they are small, and there to add an indication of scale and add interest. Before ...

. The trope commonly appears in advertisements.

Gallery

File:Giotto - Scrovegni - -36- - Lamentation (The Mourning of Christ) adj.jpg, Giotto's ''Lamentation of Christ'' (1300s) fresco at the

Cappella degli Scrovegni The Scrovegni Chapel ( it, Cappella degli Scrovegni ), also known as the Arena Chapel, is a small church, adjacent to the Augustinian order, Augustinian monastery, the ''Monastero degli Eremitani'' in Padua, Italy, Padua, region of Veneto, I ...

(Padova) has figures with their backs to the scene. File:Jan Vermeer - The Art of Painting - Google Art Project.jpg, Vermeer's '' The Art of Painting'' (1660s) File:Carl Gustav Carus - Erinnerung an Rom (1839).jpg,

Carl Gustav Carus Carl Gustav Carus (3 January 1789 – 28 July 1869) was a German physiologist and painter, born in Leipzig, who played various roles during the Romantic era. A friend of the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, he was a many-sided man: a doctor, ...

, ''Raphael and Michelangelo'' (1830s): "

hey Hey or Hey! may refer to: Music * Hey (band), a Polish rock band Albums * ''Hey'' (Andreas Bourani album) or the title song (see below), 2014 * ''Hey!'' (Julio Iglesias album) or the title song, 1980 * ''Hey!'' (Jullie album) or the title s ...

emblematize the contemporary viewer's belatedness ... they belonged precisely to an earlier epoch, one before the advent of landscape; and thus their portrayal as Romantic ''Rückenfiguren'' represents less a continuity with Rome than a rift between present and past"Koerner, 278–79 File:Durieu 1.jpg, Early photograph by Jean Louis Marie Eugène Durieu

References

Artistic techniques Composition in visual art {{Art-technique-stub