The German Pre-Raphaelites
Italy is the goal to which, sooner or later, poets and artists of all nations wend their way. In 1810 the conquests of Napoleon I. discouraged a band of German art students, and drove them from the Fatherland to seek refuge in Rome. Their names were Cornelius, Overbeck, Veit, the brothers Schadow (sculptors), and Schnor. They, and others associated later with them, initiated the Revival of German Art, which, as it is known to-day, belongs to the nineteenth century.
This little colony of Germans in Rome, between 1810 and 1830, were all very poor; they lived a semi-monastic life in the ruined convent of St. Isidore, and adopted some of the ascetic rules of Fra Angelico--invoking Divine guidance in their art every morning before beginning to paint; adopting a primitive costume; letting their hair grow long and parting it in the middle, and for this reason were called "Nazarites" in Rome. They were simple-hearted Germans, united by common gifts and a common enthusiasm for art, and were the earliest practitioners of Pre-Raphaelitism.
These German youths held that Christian Art died out when Michael Angelo and Raphael intermixed it with classic and pagan art. They proposed to recover the lost art by following the art methods of the earliest Christian fathers. In other words, they proposed to force back modern ideas into Mediaeval limitations. Like all such attempts, the effort failed; but there was a noble truth at the foundation of it. All artists worthy of the name must feel a certain consecration for their work, and live a life in accordance with it.
The colony of St. Isidore did not succeed in reviving Pre-Raphaelite Art; but in the study of that Art age, and in the consecration of their lives to Art, this band of young Germans effected one of the greatest and most sudden revolutions known in the history of Art.
After Napoleon had gone to St. Helena and peace had come to the German Fatherland, Prince Ludwig of Bavaria visited Rome. He visited also the Brotherhood of St. Isidore, and became greatly interested in this colony of German artists. With the instinct of an artist he noted the skillful drawings and the heroic designs of this band of painters, and when he came to the throne of Bavaria (Oct. 13th, 1825), he immediately offered them patronage and employment. They all accepted the call, except Overbeck, who never left Rome; and however far his brethren swerved, he, to the last, adhered to the new art-faith, and not only professed but lived an unworldly life. He died in 1859, aged eighty years.
The "Nazarites" came to Munich at the request of Ludwig I., and the Bavarian capital was soon enriched with stately buildings adorned with their works of sculpture and painting. Their coming marked the revival of German national art, and also the revival of German patriotism, and the faith that there yet remained for the Germans and Germany a national destiny. There was a great outburst of enthusiasm in Munich when the people found the walls of the New Palace of the King covered with colossal paintings by Schnor, in the revived art of fresco, illustrating the Niebelungen Lied, and picture and sculpture-galleries adorned with illustrations from German mythology and folk-lore, by native German artists. The impulse then given to German art has resulted in progress, until the German school is to-day the strong rival of the French school. Time only can tell which of these schools will win the leadership of the world in Art.