Contemporaneity, the simultaneous questioning of art by philosophy and the visual arts, the historical horizon that opens up between the paradigmatic positions of Schelling and Runge-these are the themes of this volume, in which everything revolves around constellations. Around 1800, art enjoyed a higher reputation in Germany than ever before. At the same time, contemporary visual art was in a deep crisis. Doubts were growing about Winckelmann's Greek-inspired postulate that beauty is "the highest end and center of art." Idealistic philosophers and artists of the young "Romantic" generation pushed for a new foundation for art. In this historical constellation, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854) and Philipp Otto Runge (1777-1810) made a decisive contribution to the development of 19th-century art.