Lonely Islands The epic melancholy of Caspar David Friedrich.

YOU KNOW THE WORK of Caspar David Friedrich even if you don't think you do.

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His classical landscapes, brooded over by solitary individuals or small groups, have adorned metal albums, book covers, and dorm-room posters. His art helped inform the dreamy imagery of Disney's Fantasia, and Samuel Beckett said Friedrich's moody Two Men Contemplating the Moon inspired Waiting for Godot. The influence of the 1817 existential masterpiece Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog-which depicts a man in a dark overcoat with cane poised above a cloud-wreathed valley, both master of his domain and utterly alienated from it can be seen in everything from the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe to the television show Severance to countless memes. Friedrich is the painter par excellence of German Romanticism yet also a man for all times and places.

"The Soul of Nature," the Met's new retrospective of nearly 40 of Friedrich's paintings and more than 30 of his drawings, marks the 250th year since the artist's birth in 1774. Much of Friedrich's work is housed in Europe, so this is a rare opportunity to assess him in full.

"CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH: THE SOUL OF NATURE" THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART. THROUGH MAY 11.

His pictures of graveyards, seashores, shipwrecks, and mountain vistas force us to ponder our place in the universe. No one does anything in these paintings except turn their back on the viewer and stare forlornly at the world in all its sublime majesty, which Friedrich suggests is a mirror for the world within.