Encounters: A Day for Beauty

It was a special occasion. Stefan's birthday, and we were thinking about how to spend the day. No big plans, no hustle. He said he simply wanted to see beautiful paintings again.

That's how the idea came about to go to Munich. To the Pinakothek.

We both took the day off, booked a train and looked for a restaurant for lunch and a café for later. A day with time on our hands. Time to drift, to be curious and simply let Munich wash over us.

On our way through the city we didn't just walk from one place to the next. We stopped, looked in shop windows and took in the streets, wandered into bookshops, fell into conversation and stayed a few minutes longer than we otherwise would have.

And so we finally arrived at the Pinakothek.

Inside, it grew quieter.

The rooms are arranged by epoch and trace the development of European painting from the Middle Ages to the Rococo. Italian, Flemish and German works follow one another. With each room, the motifs, colours and ways of telling stories shift.

I stopped and was struck by the craftsmanship on display. Every brushstroke placed with purpose, every figure carefully considered. It is remarkable what was possible centuries ago.

Several enormous paintings by Peter Paul Rubens hung there, filling the rooms entirely. I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed.

Equally striking were the paintings by Caspar David Friedrich, though in an entirely different way. The formats were smaller, the motifs quieter, more restrained.

One painting in particular surprised me. Summer.

I have this image as a mousepad at work, because I love that wide, open landscape. It is with me every day. And now it hung before me, the original, larger, clearer, present in a way that was altogether different.

Then a painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder: The Golden Age. I stood before it and wondered what Cranach had meant by it. When this age had been. Whether it had ever existed, or whether it was still to come. The painting shows people dancing around a fruit tree, others lying in the grass or bathing in crystal-clear water. Human and animal in perfect harmony, in a sheltered garden. Harmony and peaceful existence. A world without strife, without illness.

The Pinakothek was well visited, and yet it was quiet. People stood before the paintings, read, stepped back a few paces, then drew closer again. Each person for themselves and at the same time part of the same space. You could sense how everyone was following their own thoughts.

I walked on, stopped, let my gaze wander. Without destination, without hurry.

Later we sat together over coffee and cake. We spoke little. The paintings were still with us.

In earlier times it was entirely natural to tell stories through paintings. Actions, relationships, messages, all embedded in a system of symbols. A dog stood for loyalty, a butterfly for transformation, ivy for friendship and eternal life. Those who knew the signs read a painting like a text. It is worth engaging with this. The paintings have more to say than one sees at first glance.

These paintings, the way they are rendered, captivate me again and again, drawing me into that time, into a long-vanished world. The everyday with its demands and its noise recedes, and new impulses arise, almost of their own accord.

B.