Memorial near Abbach on the Banks of the Danube

Built in 1796 after a design by Franz Joseph Muxel (1745-1812), the depicted memorial commemorated the militarily important expansion of the route along the Danube, between the towns of Saal and Bad Abbach. The monument was dedicated to Count Karl Theodor, Prince-Elector of Bavaria, who commissioned its building. Johann Jakob Dorner the Younger, a Munich landscape painter, engraver and lithographer, used lithographic chalk in an extensive palette of greys to capture the character of the monument and the contrasts between the structures of the natural world and the results of human labour. He used this topographical theme to create a scene in which the artistic impression prevails over the documentary description, which was still unusual at the time when lithography was mainly perceived as a reproductive technique. The print is a noteworthy incunabula of Bavarian lithography. It was precisely from Munich, where Alois Senefelder (1771-1834) invented it in 1796, that this method of reproduction spread rapidly to other European cities.