Cross in the Mountains, also known as the Tetschen Altar, is an oil painting by the German artist Caspar David Friedrich designed as an altarpiece.

[3] The canvas depicts a golden summit cross with the crucified Jesus silhouetted in profile on a rock atop a mountain, surrounded by fir trees below.

The low sun may be rising or setting; its five stylized rays travel upward, and one creates a gleam on Christ, suggesting a metal sculpture.

According to Siegel, the design of the altarpiece is the "logical climax of many earlier drawings of [Friedrich's] which depicted a cross in nature's world" (see Gallery).

An exhibition book noted the formal innovations of Friedrich's landscapes: an "unwillingness to construct a continuous space from interconnected layers [and] the absence of a unifying tonality in his use of color".

For decades, art historians accepted the account of Friedrich's close friend, August Otto Rühle von Lilienstern, until new evidence arose.

By Lilienstern's account, the altar was commissioned by the Countess Theresia von Thun-Hohenstein for her Catholic family's chapel in Tetschen, Bohemia.

The painter was at first resistant to accepting the commission, tending to paint only when the muse struck him, but he agreed when he found a design for an overall altarpiece that he thought would be in harmony with the chapel setting.

According to Norbert Wolf, the Tetschen Altar was "thus first and foremost not an altarpiece but a piece of political propaganda... [taking] up the liberation ideology of the Swedish monarchy".

Lilienstern, who was present, documented the event and concluded: "Torn from [the chapel] context and placed in a room not adapted for such a display, the picture would lose a large part of its intended effect.

[11] Siegel notes that Ramdohr, a classicist, did not understand the philosophy of the new German Romantic artists, who felt that "traditional religious iconography could not allow man to experience a mystical union with God".

[10] Koerner considers Friedrich's supporters to have failed in rebutting Ramdohr's specific criticisms, but their agenda was just as much to present a new way to understand and evaluate art.

Friedrich's originality should be all the more welcome to us, since it presents us with a form of landscape painting previously less noticed, in which, within its very peculiarity, is revealed a spirited striving after truth.