St Peter’s Cemetery in Winter

Winter landscapes were among the artist's favourite motifs: from 1845 onwards, he painted several versions of the snow-covered graveyard. This work, which differs from the other versions primarily by the omission of St.Margaret's Chapel, formed part of Archduke Ludwig Viktor's collection at Schloss Kleßheim.
Executing his work with fine brushes and meticulous attention to detail, Bürkel combined landscape and genre painting into an atmospheric depiction. The graveyard, deeply covered in snow, lies between an arcaded wall and the Romanesque apse of St. Catherine's Chapel. In the silence of a winter morning, a monk sweeps a path through the snow. Above the rock which is crowned by the Hohensalzburg fortress, the sun comes out through the clouds. Cool, finely graded tones of grey and white determine the muted colouring. With great attention to the time of year and day, Bürkel captured the particular mood of the location. The old graveyard, enclosed by an arcaded wall and the rock face of the Mönchsberg with the so-called catacombs, which date back to the early Christian times of the Roman town Juvavum, was frequently depicted by the German Romantics, for whom it was a popular subject. Thirty years before, Carl Philipp Fohr (1795–1818) and Ferdinand Olivier (1785–1841) had already made watercolours and drawings of this ideal Romantic veduta in their sketchbooks.

MAYR-ORHEING Erika: Graveyard of St. Peter's in winter, in: GROSCHNER Gabriele, HABERSATTER Thomas, MAYR-OEHRING Erika (Ed.): Masterworks. Residenzgalerie Salzburg. Salzburg 2002, p. 118