Thunderstorm over Mount Serano near Olevano in the Sabine Mountains

Thunderstorm over Mount Serano near Olevano in the Sabine Mountains, painted in 1830 and now in Frankfurt's Städel Museum, is one of the most meteorologically dramatic works in Richter's oeuvre — a landscape that shows his capacity, when the subject demanded, to move beyond pastoral warmth toward genuine Romantic sublimity. Olevano Romano in the Sabine Hills was the most important German artists' colony outside Rome proper, visited by nearly every significant German landscape painter working in Italy in the first half of the nineteenth century. Mount Serano, rising behind Olevano, offered commanding views of the storm-prone Apennine foothills. A thunderstorm over these mountains — with lightning, dark cloud masses, and the dramatic contrast between storm and sunlit terrain — gave Richter access to the sublime register that he usually held in reserve. The Städel is one of Germany's oldest and most distinguished museums, and its holding of this atypical Richter enriches the understanding of his range.

Storm painting required a fundamentally different tonal approach than Richter's usual luminous pastorals: dark cloud masses occupy much of the sky, and the light effects are dramatic and concentrated rather than even. He uses strong value contrasts between storm-dark sky and the lit landscape below where sunlight breaks through, a strategy learned from studying Claude and Poussin.