Spencer Alley: Nazarene Fresco Cycles (Secular)

Friday, July 16, 2021

Nazarene Fresco Cycles (Secular)

Johann Friedrich Overbeck
Gerusalemme Liberata (detail)
1819-27
fresco
Stanza del Tasso, Casa Massimo, Rome

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld
Orlando Furioso (detail)
1822-27
fresco
Stanza di Ariosto, Casa Massimo, Rome

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld
Study for Casa Massimo fresco figure (Orlando Furioso)
1822-27
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

"I have endeavoured to set forth the modern school of Germany, not in the sunshine of eulogy, but under the tempered light and shade of discriminative criticism. I feel that we owe to the works passed in review a debt of no ordinary gratitude. Forms so pure, visions so heavenly, should engrave upon the heart of hearts a love of the beautiful – an aspiration towards the good and the true. This must be our eulogy. And if criticism intrude to cool our ardour, take it not for cavil, but rather as a claim put in for something better yet to come. The mission of the highest Art remains to be accomplished. Overbeck and his school have attained unwonted heights, but truths more generic . . . are yet within the reach of the artist who shall reconcile the ideality of the inner life with the perfection of outward and natural forms. Such a school, which is still the possibility and hope of the future, will realise the visions of our poetic intuitions, will restore, in some measure at least, for the delight of the eye and the consolation of fond desire, that world of beauty, which we are told was once created the home of man, and may yet, in the depths of a boundless space, be granted as his heritage."

– Joseph Beavington Atkinson, from The Revival of Art in Germany, published in the The Art Journal (London, March 1, 1864)