Steinle.   “I HAVE TRODDEN THE WINEPRESS ALONE:
   AND OF THE PEOPLE THERE WAS NONE WITH ME.”

When the intelligence of the Battle of Waterloo had penetrated even into the silent cells of the monks, they believed that art too should participate in this universal elevation, and become a factor again in the development of the German nation. It must not be used, wrote Cornelius in his famous letter to Görres, as a mere plaything, or to tickle the senses, not merely for the delectation and pomp of high and rich Maecenases, but for the ennoblement and glorification of public life. The means of this artistic elevation, and at the same time a new means of popular culture, was to be the introduction of fresco painting.

And thus the Brothers of San Isidoro re-discovered what had, as a matter of fact, always been quietly practiced by the “rustics painters,” but since Mengs’ time had no longer been employed by the “art painters,” and had been forgotten for half a century. The Prussian consul at Rome, Bartholdy, gave them the commission. An old mason, who had last arranged wall-plastering under Mengs, was recruited as technical adviser; Carl Eggers, of Neustrelitz, zealously made chemical researches; and it is said to have been Veit who, at Cornelius’ request (“Now, Philip, you make the first attempt!”), was the first to paint the portrait of a head in fresco, whilst his companions looked on with amazement and delight. Then the others set to work, “and painted away at it in the name of God.” “Yes, believe me, my friend, it is a desperate matter to paint over a whole room in a manner which one has never before practised oneself nor seen practised by others. Every day we tell each other that we are fine bunglers, and give each other a regular dressing down. You can have no conception how strange it feels at first when one is confronted by damp plaster and lime. And nevertheless we construct daily fresh castles in the air for painting churches, monasteries, and palaces in Germany.”

The frescoes represent, in six mural paintings and two lunettes, the history of Joseph in Egypt, from his sale to his recognition by his brethren. The two latter are the work of Cornelius and Overbeck, the others of Veit and Schadow. The work was prolonged through many years, interrupted by manifold difficulties, and when one stands to-day before the transferred pictures in the Berlin National Gallery one cannot refrain from admiring them.

EDWARD STEINLE.

There lives within them an unpretentiousness and sincerity of sentiment, and, in spite of all deficiencies and lack of independence, somewhat of that lofty inspiration which raises the pictures of really earnest artists, even if they are faulty, far above any fabricated productions. An association of young men, which, unconcerned about success and material profit, contended only for ideal products, found here for the first time an opportunity to display what it wanted. In the interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream and in the recognition by the brethren, Cornelius, in formal language, full of character, and without any phrases and posture, displayed all that he had derived from the great Italians in nobility of grouping and fine arrangement of lines. Overbeck reaches the same height in his allegory of the seven lean kine. But it is not only as youthful works of artists, who, if they belonged to a period of decadence, yet were, withal, the greatest representatives of a period of German art, that these pictures are worthy of high esteem; they are essentially the best that these masters have created. Cornelius, notably, shows a study, a care for execution, indeed even a harmony of colouring, that stands in surprising opposition to his later negligence. From the conception that the artistic performance is determined in the invention, and the design, but that the pictorial execution is an indifferent, mechanical accessory which could be supplied even by other people, he was at that time still free.

STEINLE.BOOK ILLUSTRATION.

When the pictures had been unveiled in 1819 a festival of German artists was held in Rome. Rückert, Bunsen, the Humboldts, the Herzes were there; Cornelius, Veit, and Overbeck had arranged the transparencies. “The centre of all,” writes the Danish romantic Atterbom, was the Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria, “the idol of every German artist, whose ruling passion is for the fine arts and fair ladies. Everything was in old German masques, the ladies in wide ruffs. The Crown Prince was in the utmost good humour, and treated the artists as his equals. A toast was drunk to German unity. The scene struck me like a beautiful dream out of the Middle Ages.” German unity at a Roman fancy ball! The German nation a beautiful dream out of the Middle Ages! The Crown Prince Ludwig, when he took Cornelius and Schnorr out of the Roman circle, at least created a fatherland for German art, and later on the others also found at home a suitable sphere of activity.

Philip Veit, who went to Frankfort in 1830 as Director of the Staedel Institute, was the first to settle down, and for all his energy could only for a very short time make that city into a seat of the Christian tendency in art. Of his pictures there, the fresco painted for the Staedel Institute, “The Introduction of Christianity into Germany by St. Boniface,” is by far the most important. The apostle has hewn down the oak of Thor, and from where it once stood there flows forth the new spring of Christianity. The old Germans shrink back timorously, but the youths listen to the preacher, and follow his direction to the figure of religion which approaches with the palm of peace. In the background a church rises, and in the distance, by a limpid river, a flourishing town, in contrast to the sombre, primeval forest to which the Germans who reject religion are flying.