[2] Caspar David Friedrich was born in a harbor town known as Greifswald in Pomerania in 1774, many years before Germany's cities and states were unified.

Primarily working in Dresden, Friedrich established his spiritual artistic style, creating landscapes that "looked inwards as well as outwards.

[5] In the subsequent years, Friedrich's style was heavily influenced by changes in his social life, including his marriage to Caroline Bommer in 1818, after which he placed new emphasis on figures in his artwork.

[3] Friedrich in many of his works has a similar scene, where a figure (usually seen from behind) contemplates the nature that appears in front of them, leaving their reaction unspecified for the painting's viewer.

[2] The simplicity of the domestic space leads the viewer's gaze to the view beyond the window to the masts of the ships gliding on the Elbe and the greenery in the distance.

However, in this painting, the central figure is separated from the landscape; the spiritual connection comes from her prayer-like posture and the form of a cross in the window pane above her head.

[6] The woman's highly symmetrical domestic space is contrasted with the asymmetrical world beyond the window, emphasized through the viewer's fragmented view of the ships and the poplars on the banks of the river.

[3] This off-centered convergence point is indicative of the viewpoint in which Friedrich observed the scene of his wife in front of the window and painted in this piece.

[3] It is argued in this interpretation that the piece "involves looking at symmetry from an angle," which coincides with Friedrich's goal to portray subjectivity as the individual's experience of a frame of reference.

[5] Beyond the cross-like form of the window frame, the masts of ships floating on the river also can serve as a religious motif, symbolizing and eliciting a desire to travel beyond the known horizons to discover new places or spiritual enlightenment.