Henry II's dream before 1810

Franz Pforr made this pen and black ink drawing, titled "Henry II's Dream," sometime before his death in 1812. Here we see the Holy Roman Emperor Henry II, a figure from the distant past, caught between the promises of earthly power and the threats of divine judgment. Above him are two figures, the enthroned bishop representing worldly authority, and the skeleton of death, reminding us of our mortality. Pforr was a member of the Brotherhood of Saint Luke, a group of German Romantic artists who wanted to revive the spiritual values of the late Middle Ages. They rejected what they saw as the cold, rational classicism promoted by the art academies of their own time. Art historians rely on manifestos and letters from this period to understand their aesthetic values. What did it mean for early 19th-century artists to look back to the art of the 1400s, before the Renaissance? How did they understand the institutions that shaped artistic taste, both in the past and the present? These are just some of the questions we might ask ourselves.