Page 35 - Gallery 19C Nazarenes Catalogues

Fig. 21 Fig. 22

Counter to the Renaissance belief in vivacità, the late Overbeck A New Lyricism: The Next Generation of
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began to promote a “mortification” of flesh and form. The dead Nazarenes in Düsseldorf and Vienna
body of Christ turned into a metaphor for art itself, art as allegory,
as hieroglyph, as idea, drained of expressive gesture, animated Not everybody was moved. “Too conscious, studied, and deliberate!”
pantomime and vivid coloring. In Rome, Overbeck’s opinions exclaimed Clemens Brentano (1778–1842), who, as a young man, had
exerted considerable influence, even on sculpture, and in 1843, the been among the most experimental literary midwives of German
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German was invited to sign the clarion call of the Italian Puristi, Romanticism. Now in his sixties, the poet had developed an intense
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which promoted quintessentially Nazarene ideals. If the suggested mysticism that yearned for spiritual intensity, not an ascetic purification
mortification of form thus radicalized an already idealist notion of of form. Brentano was thus irresistibly drawn to the sweet, subjective
art, it did not diminish its inward spirituality or emotional impact. tenderness of the next generation of Nazarenes, of an Edward Jacob
To the contrary, as the Swiss painter and patron Emilie Linder Steinle (1810–1886) or a Joseph Führich (1800–1876). Both were
(1797–1867) wrote to Overbeck in February 1837 after seeing the fervent admirers of Overbeck, with whom they had studied while in
latter’s recently finished Death of Joseph: “People, I would like to say, Rome. Neither followed in their idol’s stylistic footsteps. Indebted to
whose hearts are in the right place, all stood in front of the painting the Lukasbund’s early Raphaelism, they felt free to experiment with a
quite moved, and here and there I saw a tear welling up.” 59 nearly Baroque expressivity or push toward an unabashedly nostalgic
idiom that realized the Romantic desire for childhood innocence
and the simple legends. Sentimentality, however, did not imply a
lack of theological finesse. On the contrary, Führich, too, was hailed

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