Johann Friedrich Overbeck: Doubting Thomas (1851)

We continue our look at Johann Friedrich Overbeck (1789 – 1869), leader of the Nazarene Movement which sought to return art to its more Christian, early Renaissance roots.

Fate was kind to Overbeck after his arrival in Rome.  The Prussian consul, Jakob Salomon Bartholdy, commissioned Overbeck and fellow Nazarenes Peter von Cornelius, Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow and Philipp Veit to create a fresco telling the story Joseph and his Brethren for his home, the Palazzo Zuccari.  This led to commissions from Prince Massimo for frescos illustrating Tasso, Dante and Aristotle.  Perhaps this commission did not reflect his High Christian ideals, as he worked on this for 10 years before passing the task onto his friend, painter Joseph von Führich.  Overbeck would then turn to a subject perhaps closer to his heart, the Vision of St. Francis, for the Porziuncola in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli near Assisi.  Rome would remain his artistic and spiritual home until his death in 1869.

Doubting Thomas (or The Incredulity of St. Thomas), painted in 1851, amply displays all the strengths and weaknesses of Overbeck’s work.  The picture is based on the Biblical account of Thomas the Apostle who, when confronted by the resurrected Jesus, insisted on touching His wounds in order to believe it was truly He.  (Hence the common parlance “Doubting Thomas.”)  Once he stuck his finger into Jesus’ wound, he professed his faith – becoming Thomas the Believer.  Jesus says, “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”  (The negative effect unquestioning faith has had on humankind is incalculable – but that is a subject for a different blog.)

Overbeck frames the central images of Christ and Thomas with a wonderful circular window, further enhancing the centrality of the images with the natural light of the sky.  The tiled floor and framed central figures call to mind such early Renaissance masters as Masaccio (1401 – 1428), an artist linking the Gothic and Renaissance traditions.

All the figures seem too posed for any sense of naturalism, such as Christ’s upraised arm allowing Thomas to touch the wound while bestowing what looks like a blessing at the same time.  This Christ is also much younger and more approachable than the rather patrician Jesus of Christ in the House of Mary and Martha.  The distribution of weight on both of His legs also seems reminiscent of classical statuary – something which certainly would not have been Overbeck’s wish.

Though certainly a ‘good’ painting, again I cannot help but wonder at what Overbeck was seeking to toss aside.  Below is a painting of The Incredulity of St. Thomas by a late Renaissance master, Caravaggio (1571-1610).  It is by any yardstick a magnificent painting – and more human in scope and feel than that of Overbeck.  More importantly, Christ and his disciples are in no way diminished by the blatant humanity of the piece.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  Thomas is a real human figure lined by care, and the wound in Christ’s chest is certainly a horrific reminder of His ordeal.  Granted the different styles, aesthetics and eras of both artists, but why would Overbeck believe a less sophisticated approach to his art equaled deepened religious conviction?  It is a question similar to those of today, who think religious devotion equals a distrust of science and a renunciation of the modern world – a world which, to the dismay of some, continues to spin.

Johann Friedrich Overbeck: Christ in the House of Mary and Martha (1815)

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.

The Schadow Knows…..Part Three

We close our look at Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow (1789 - 1862) with one of the works that helped cement his reputation.  Schadow was one of the founders of the Nazarenes, a group that hoped to restore art to a greater spiritual and philosophical purity.  It was a case of aesthetics translating (as it often does) into a type of religious devotion.  The Nazarene were given the commission to create frescos in Pincian Hill, home of Consul-General, General Jakob Saloman Bartholdy.  The biblical Joseph was set as the theme, and Schadow painted Joseph’s brothers returning to their father Jacob with the saint’s bloody coat, and the saint in prison. 

One of the fascinating things about the Nazarenes is that their mission so closely resembled that of the better-known Pre-Raphaelites, who followed nearly 40 years later.  Like the Nazarenes, they thought the sometimes stilted virtuosity of the great Academic painters had stunted artistic progress.  The great irony to me, though, is that the Nazarenes, so little remembered today, came so close to the mark, while the Pre-Raphaelites so widely missed the boat.

Though some of the most magnificently beautiful paintings came from the Pre-Raphaelite experiment, none of the pictures ever looked like anything other than what they were: Victorian-era work inspired by ancient themes.  The Nazarenes, on the other hand, often sought to create a closer simulacrum.  Schadow, specifically in his Joseph frescoes, very much hits the mark in capturing the composition, feel and depth of the Quattrocento. 

Let’s look at the Biblical myth of Joseph and his brothers.  Jacob, an elder patriarch, favors his son Joseph over his other sons. These sons burn with jealously and plan to get Joseph out of their way. They first throw him into a pit before selling him as a slave to a passing group of traders on their way to Egypt.

When the brothers return home, they show Jacob the coat of many colors he gave to Joseph, drenched in goat’s blood. Jacob immediately believes their story that Joseph was killed by a wild animal.  Or, as it is written in Genesis 37:

And they took Joseph's coat, and killed a kid of the goats, and dipped the coat in the blood;

And they sent the coat of many colors, and they brought it to their father; and said, This have we found: know now whether it be thy son's coat or no.

And he knew it, and said, It is my son's coat; an evil beast hath devoured him; Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces.

And Jacob rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days.

And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him.

The story of Joseph mirrors others found in the Bible (Job and Moses come to mind) – a holy man suffering great privation or tribulations before entering a happier, more graceful state. 

Though a product of the 19^th Century, Schadow’s interpretation of Jacob and Joseph’s coat has more in common with the early Renaissance master Masaccio than his near-contemporary Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti.  The figures have a definite musculature, but have not yet become the heroic titans of Michelangelo.  And despite mastery of perspective, the overall composition apes the ‘flatness’ of much early Renaissance work.

Also, Schadow eschews any notion of the ethereal or the sublime, which is surprising considering the overarching mission of the Nazarenes.  Though the figures are posed to capture a supreme dramatic moment, rich in the possibilities of pathos, instead his tableaux strikes a note of melodrama.  Schadow has caught the knack of Quattrocento replication, but also retained all of its drawbacks.

That criticism aside, it is a mighty work.  Jacob, upon hearing the news, already begins to rend his clothing, almost before the blood on Joseph’s coat is dry.  The old man’s grief will be all-consuming, so self-directed is the intensity of his emotion that he neglects the child at his feet.  The flowering tree/vine at Jacob’s back underscores that he is the trunk of this family tree, and that it has flowered considerably.

The women gesticulate wildly but, to my eye, the most successful figures in the picture are the scheming brothers.  The brother with the coat looks on as his father becomes consumed with grief – is that a look of shock at the old man’s wild reaction?  Or, perhaps, a note of self-satisfied irony?  Contrast that expression with the brother on the far left; his expression clearly reads, what have I done?

The landscape behind them, just suggested with a few subtle stokes to indicate hills and fields, does indeed look wild and inhospitable – truly a place of son-eating wild beasts.

With this fresco Schadow achieved the goals of the Nazarenes, but it strikes this viewer as something of a hollow triumph.  Pastiche without internal commentary is too often imitation – a reflection of the real thing.

The Schadow Knows…..Part One

The term “Impressionism” was originally intended as an insult – as is often the case, the slur becomes the badge of honor, and the original taint of intent is gone.  So it was with the Nazarene Movement, when a group of 19^th Century painters decided to aspire to greater spirituality and honesty in art.  The group took to calling themselves the Brotherhood of St. Luke, with some of them moving to Rome and living in the abandoned monastery of San Isidoro. 

The Nazarenes also thought that the Academic pictures of the time were soulless exercises in virtuosity, and sought to bring art back to a spiritual ideal more in line with the late Middle Ages or the early Renaissance.  The Nazarene movement resulted in a great deal of interesting work, but its philosophical mode of attack was far too stringent for it to last, or for it not to engender long-lasting hostility.

One of the more interesting Nazarenes was Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow (1789 - 1862), a German Romantic painter born in Berlin and son of the celebrated sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow.

Schadow was a soldier from 1806-1807, and left for Rome in 1810 with the Nazarene painters Johann Friedrich Overbeck (1789-1869) and Franz Pforr, (1788-1812) among others.  He also joined the Roman Catholic Church, and believed that an artist must believe and live out the truths he hopes to paint. 

Schadow and several Nazarenes were given the commission to create frescos in Pincian Hill,  house of Consul-General, General Jakob Saloman Bartholdy.  The biblical Joseph was set as the theme, with Schadow painting Joseph’s bloody coat and the saint in prison. 

Schadow was appointed professor in the prestigious Berlin Academy of the Arts in 1819.  As the Nazarene Movement ran out of steam, Schadow became a celebrated teacher.  He wrote a wonderful lecture, About the Influence of Christianity on the Visual Arts (1843) and several biographical sketches, The Modern Vasari (1854).  He also painted for churches throughout Germany.

Before looking at some of Schadow’s religious paintings this week, I wanted to first look at this magnificent painting of his step-brother, Felix.  Painted in 1829, this picture is my favorite in the artist’s oeuvre, and simply one of the finest portraits ever painted.

Schadow sought to mimic the styles of the Quattrocento masters, but his coloration is always distinctly Germanic.  His style favors a remarkable realism and a spectacular mastery of drawing.  His surfaces often had an enamel-like quality, along with a simplicity of modeling and composition.

By any critical yardstick, this is a fantastic picture.  Contrast the stark white of the boy’s starched collar against the smooth, peach coloration of his skin.  Also look at how his golden tunic draws attention to the boy’s delicately rendered hair.  Gentle highlights of white are used to underscore the delicacy of his nose and mouth, and the Morocco binding of the book and red highlights of the sky give the figure warmth and vitality.

Scahdow paints his half-brother’s eyes as large and luminescent, while he tapers the boy’s fingers with an almost feminine modeling.  The love inherent in this picture is palpable on the canvas, and it a highpoint of German portraiture.

More Schadow tomorrow.