This Cloud Study by nineteenth-century Norwegian painter Knud Baade depicts a busy sky over the rooftops of Dresden, Germany. It boasts a range of different formations. Yellow- and gold-tinted cloudlets in the clear sky of the middle and in the gap to the top right of them are Altocumulus, shining bright in the sunlight, as they’re higher than the others. A dark Cumulonimbus calvus storm cloud towers in the lower right, with dark clumps of Stratocumulus extending along the horizon to the left and appearing in patches in the upper left. We’re not quite sure what’s going on with the strange conical, orange-rimmed Stratocumulus in the lower middle, but the delicate cap atop the cloud tower in the middle right is unmistakable. This is the velvety cloud cap known as a pileus forming above the building Cumulonimbus, and it’s the cherry on top of Baade’s cloudscape.

Clouds became central to Baade’s work when the artist was in his mid-thirties. Many European artists in the nineteenth century produced cloud studies, but Baade’s stand out as featuring cloudscapes at dusk and at night more than during the middle of the day. Across the series, he showed particular interest in Stratocumulus and Cumulus clouds and the graceful ways they shroud the Moon, reflect light at sunset, and frame skylines.