We return
this week to the Nazarenes, a group
of artists who sought to bring art back to the time of the early Renaissance, free from the influence of
the later masters, such as Michelangelo
and Raphael. Just why the early Renaissance was held up as
an ideal is an interesting question.
The leader
of the movement, Johann Friedrich
Overbeck (1789 – 1869), believed that art had been corrupted by
Enlightenment-era thinking. He thought
that painters in the Academy were spurred by visions of artistic excellence,
and not by divine inspiration or love of God.
He wrote a friend during his training to say that he was losing his
faith in humanity while studying art, and was forging a closer connection to
God as a way to cope with the rigors of contemporary life. Overbeck was, in short, much like many people
terrified by the real world: looking for
comfort in an idealized past or seeking solace in the myths of religion and the
supernatural.
Overbeck
was born in Lübeck, the product of three generations of Protestant
pastors. Overbeck left Lübeck in 1806 to
study art under Heinrich Füger in
Vienna. Füger was a teacher steeped in
the Classical tradition (he had trained under Jacques-Louis David).
Overbeck absorbed the lessons taught in the Academy, but found the lack
of religious focus inimical to his views on art. He created a following of his own while at
the Academy – eventually calling themselves the Nazarenes. After four years, he and his followers would
be expelled.
Overbeck
went to Rome in 1810, where he stayed mostly for the next 59 years. (He became a Roman Catholic in 1813.) He was joined by other artists attracted to
his way of thinking, including Peter von
Cornelius, Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow
and Philipp Veit. They lived in an old Franciscan convent, San
Isidoro, where they worked hard and prayed harder. A Holy Order of Artists is an idea not
without charm, but I believe the Nazarenes rejected too much that was good and
embraced quite a bit that was retrogressive.
They believed firmly in a hardness of outline which robs many of the
figures of any feeling of being within their space, and used light, composition
and color mainly as a means to further an argument rather than to create images
of beauty.
Today’s
picture, Christ in the House of Mary and
Martha, was painted in 1815. The
story can be found in Luke 10: Jesus visits the home of Martha and Mary. Mary sits at His feet and listens to Him
speak while Martha proceeded to "make all the preparations that had to be
made." Martha becomes upset that
Mary did not help, and Christ says: "Martha, Martha ... you are worried
and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what
is better, and it will not be taken away from her." In short, one could call it a summation of
the entire Nazarene philosophy.
There is
much to admire in this picture but, to my mind, very little to love. The attempt to reimagine an early Renaissance
aesthetic is admirable, but it never looks like anything other than a
pastiche. Worse still, Overbeck’s high
mindedness seems to rob the picture of any drama it might have: instead of
sitting at Christ’s feet in raptures, Mary looks rather bored by it all. And Martha, the scold, looks more like a
harried house frau than a lost soul.
Christ seems rather patrician and formidable in profile – more Basil Rathbone than Prince of
Peace. And who is that standing behind
him – looking for all the world as if she wished that she, too, were seated?
But … what
Overbeck gets right he hits in spades.
The trio behind Jesus are depicted with the gentle lines of the early Renaissance
Masters, and the room and furnishings reflect that period’s love of detail for
its own sake. The folds of the clothes
are lovingly detailed and at the same time flat – aping the sometimes unsure
sense of depth found in early Renaissance pictures. Also present is an out-of-window view,
another favorite trope of the early Renaissance, featuring something that
comments on the foreground action.
Though I can’t be sure, it certainly looks to my eye like Jesus bringing
Lazarus back to life … which justified the faith of both Mary and Martha.
Move Overbeck tomorrow.
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