Page 24 - Gallery 19C Nazarenes Catalogues

Others interpreted it exactly the other way round, as a confession of in God. As modelled by the Lukasbund, the Düsseldorf School sees on feeling paired with a simplified composition that lives off clear,
loyalty to a dying monarchy, denouncing its demise. The majority, sentiment as a bridge between surface and soul, as a bridge between mellifluous outlines and an elegant color scheme, one that here evolves
however, was convinced that the canvas depicted the Royal couple past and present. Sentiment and the sentimentalization of history around primary hues tastefully arranged in a bouquet of off-shades.
from Ludwig Uhland’s 1805 ballad, The Castle by the Sea, who grieve thus function as means to open up a space between ageless humanity Last but not least, Bendemann went to great lengths to realize
the death of their only daughter. Carl Friedrich Lessing (1808–1880), and historical time, where the artist can invoke what might have Schadow’s core principle, a naturalist idealism. To assure his
however, refused to comment on the content of his hit canvas, and been and what that putative “has been” might mean in the here and composition’s idealism, Bendemann turned, unsurprisingly, to the
left his audience guessing. Soon, even the staffage of landscapes now. In the middle of that crossing, pathos yielded to psychology. Italian Renaissance, from which he gleaned the conception of his figures
posed riddles, and not only in Lessing’s paintings (see Cat. 2). and the style of his garments. The latter clearly flaunt their origins as
A staunch critic of religion, Karl Marx dismissed the sentimentality mere studio props tailored from modern fabrics and draped over the
The success of Lessing’s genre historique derived to a large extent of the Düsseldorf School as an acute symptom of the crisis the life model, and it is this presence of a modern body that leads to the
from a successful transfer of the religious prototypes of Nazarene bourgeoisie was finding itself in. It is, he bemoaned, “the specific second part of Schadow’s equation, the call for a naturalistic inflection.
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art to profane history. As such, his canvas was a quintessential expression of the Philistine’s helpless resentment.” The honorable In a powerful homage to his master and mentor, Bendemann not only
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example of what I have called “the secular devotional picture.” As Reverend J. M. Sherwood could not have disagreed more. The realized the rebirth of history painting from the spirit of portraiture
such, it also epitomized the kind of soul-painting that Düsseldorf influential New-York publishing house Charles Scribner & Co. had by modelling the face of the young mother after the widely recognized
would become famous for: elegiac pictures tinged with melancholy just asked him to serve as the editor-in-chief of a new magazine, features of an acclaimed beauty named Francesca Primavera, he also
and nostalgia, intensely emotional yet strangely passive, epic yet Hours at Home, and he had decided to furbish the first edition with turned to none other than Schadow himself, who would lend his
without heroic action. This emphasis on feeling and a psychological a four-partite series on contemporary German art. This claim was prominent physiognomy, captured by Bendemann in an expressive oil
exploration of states of mind shifted the narrative function misleading, however, insofar the Americans, like the French, associated study, to the exiled Jew at the center. 35
from pictured plot to the picture’s audience, who found itself German art exclusively with the art of the Nazarenes, which, on the
suddenly charged with making sense of history. Full of soul and other hand, seemed only appropriate for a Popular Monthly Devoted As so often the case in Nazarene art, each gesture is deeply meaningful.
longing, the paintings themselves reveled in enigmatic silence. to Religious and Useful Literature. Smitten by the aesthetic and moral Both Schadow and Bendemann had Jewish mothers, and while both had
qualities Sherwood saw in the Düsseldorf School of Painting, he been baptized as babies, their Jewish roots played a far-reaching role
Enigma also opened the door, at least for a believer like Schadow, asked his readers to pay particular attention “to this, the subjective in their critical reception. This was particularly true for Bendemann,
to a realm of faith and higher meaning threatened in a world torn and spiritual aspect of the Düsseldorf School,” and concluded that who is often said, but falsely so, to have converted only after having
apart by revolutions, industrialization and the destruction of social “the art which soars farthest from earth is nearest to heaven.” 34 finished his grand vision of exile, diaspora and hope. Despite the scene’s
Fig. 15 bonds. It offered a pictorial sanctuary where life’s vagaries could strangely timeless atmosphere, its theme could not have carried more
be navigated and, most importantly, personal tragedy sublimated.
Soul-Painting Filled with compassion for the tragic loss suffered by his close friend Innovation and Nazarene Legacy in Eduard Bendemann’s topical relevance, and the contemporaries recognized this instantly.
Julius Hübner (1806–1882), whose beloved daughter had just died On the one hand, it called up the politically explosive question of Jewish
In 1828, Düsseldorf’s new soul-painting took a riveted public by storm. 1832 hit canvas, The Captive Jews in Babylon emancipation, and more than one critic interpreted the figures’ grandeur
The occasion was the biannual exhibition at the Berlin academy, where at an unbearably young age, Schadow thus urged his former pupil The new aesthetic strategies featured in a work like Lessing’s version of as a bold confession of sympathy for their plight. On the other hand, the
Schadow and his students premiered as a unified school. The audience to give shape to his sorrow by painting one of the “eternal scenes of the genre historique were also key when it came to rethinking religious picture’s wistful aura captured the resigned political mood of the 1830s,
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had never seen something like it, and jostled in large crowds to get a Christ’s Passion (for example the Burial).” This act would not only art under the condition of modernity (Fig. 16). It would fall upon when the longing of the German bourgeoisie for national unity had
better view before the majestic depiction of A Mourning Royal Couple allow Hübner to come to terms with his daughter’s passing, it also the youngest among Schadow’s first generation of students, Eduard been crushed, and many saw in Bendemann’s rendition of mourning an
(Fig. 15). The painting was intense, filled with a sense of suffering would enable him to transform the intensity of his feeling into an Bendemann (1811–1889), to achieve just that, the ultimate religious adequate allegory for the disappointments of their liberal and national
and grief so palpable that hardly a viewer could escape its effect. authenticity of pictorial expression, and it is this emotional truth that history painting Düsseldorf style. Returning to the Bible for inspiration, aspirations. But perhaps the most important dimension, and certainly
The painting was equally puzzling. Who are these brooding figures, we see reflected in the face of Hübner’s Mary Magdalene (see Cat. 5). Bendemann settled on a passage never before depicted as multi- the most Nazarene, was the underlying theme of conversion. The willow,
and whom are they mourning? The coffin on the bier behind them Excised from a larger biblical context, the Saint’s lamentation over the figured history painting: the opening lines of Psalm 137, “By the rivers chosen by the captive Jews to hang up their harps, is overgrown by wine,
suggests death as the harbinger of their sorrow. But nothing reveals dead Christ, her pain speaks to us as an almost unbearable experience of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered the symbol of Christ’s passion and God’s promise of salvation; the young
who might have fallen prey to the grim reaper’s merciless scythe. As that is as much spiritual as it is utterly universal and quintessentially Zion,” cited later on the painting’s massive gold frame in relief letters. mother with the blond child doubles as Madonna and Ecclesia, taken
identities remain hidden, a dark secret seems to weigh heavily on the human. This expressed emphasis on a sincere, ingenuous human The nearly life-size composition united all those qualities that were her rightful place opposite Synagoga, the dark-haired beauty to the right,
scene. A wild guessing game ensued. Some saw the work by the merely connection between artist, image and audience reflects a prototypically fueling the young school’s meteoric rise to fame: a profound emphasis whose cast-down gaze symbolizes her spiritual blindness.
twenty-year-old as an anti-feudalistic attack against Restoration rule. Nazarene search for Truth, a truth found above all, they believed,

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