Roderick, Molly, Anna and Natasha make it to the Alte Nationalgalerie today. Finally. Around one in the afternoon.
The day starts around nine. Roderick and Molly take a longish shower, then walk with Anna to the Adlon, but when they arrive Natasha isn't ready; it seems she slept in. So they settle in for breakfast, which takes awhile for Room Service to deliver, and Natasha showers with her valet.
They take their time strolling up Unter Den Linden. Anna has her guidebook, and pauses from time to time to read aloud in German, which none of the other three understand.
They stop by a statue in the middle of the street. Anna announces: "Reiterstandbild König Friedrich II von Preußen."
"What's that?" whispers Molly.
Roderick squints. "Some guy on a horse."
At the museum, they linger over the paintings of Menzel, Schadow, Thorwaldsen, Canova, Schadow, Begas, von Hildebrand, Meunier, Thoma, Feuerbach, Böcklin, von Marées, Leibl, and Trübner; the works of Max Lieberman; the art of Jakob Philipp Hacker and portraits by Anton Graff and his contemporaries. On the next floor, they study the works of the German artists working in Rome, such as Peter Cornelius, Friedrich Overbeck, Wilhelm Schadow and Philipp Veit, plus the frescoes illustrating the story of Joseph, commissioned for the Casa Bartholdy in Rome, which are a major achievement of the period.
After a brief pause, they move on to see the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich from all phases of his artistic career, plus the works of Carl Blechen, Philipp Otto Runge, Gottlieb Schick, Joseph Anton Koch, Carl Rottmann, Eduard Gaertner, Johann Erdmann Hummel, Carl Spitzweg and Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller.
Natasha sees Roderick gazing at Carl Spitzweg's Flying Kites. She snuggles up to him and points at the picture. "Don't you just love the brushwork, the brilliant use of color, the radical composition...?"
"I don't know," says Roderick. "I've always said that if you've seen one Carl Spitzweg you've seen them all."
There is a room full of Monets, Manets and Renoirs. Molly tugs at Roderick's sleeve. "I just love Impressionists," she sighs.
Roderick chuckles. He thinks it's funny that a museum in Berlin has French paintings. Spoils of war, he thinks. He considers commenting, but decides not to.
