Painted around 1818, Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog is nothing less than a Wertherian statement of communion with the divine as well as a passionate veneration of the natural world and the spiritual awe it inspires. Friedrich’s most famous painting is one of the keynote images of German Romanticism—an end-of-century movement that challenged the Enlightenment’s embrace of rationality and science. The year 2024 is the 250th anniversary of Friedrich’s birth, and German art museums are pushing the boat out for the man whose work—for better or worse—provided the spiritual and emotional underpinning for the country’s national drive in the 19th century. The Albertinum’s “Where It All Started” is a contextual exhibition that shows Friedrich’s landscapes alongside the paintings that influenced them—works by old masters such as Jacob van Ruisdael, Salvator Rosa, and Claude Lorrain. —Andrew Pulver