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Johann Friedrich Overbeck

Johann Friedrich Overbeck (3 July 1789 – 12
Johann Friedrich Overbeck
November 1869) was a German painter and a founder of
the Nazarene art movement.[1][2]

Early life and education

Overbeck was born in Lübeck in 1789. His family had been
Protestant pastors for three generations ; his father
Christian Adolph Overbeck (1755-1821) was doctor of law,
poet, mystic pietist and burgomaster of Lübeck. Near the
family mansion in the Konigstrasse stood the Gymnasium,
where his uncle, a doctor of theology and a voluminous
writer, was the master; there Johann became a classic
scholar and received instruction in art.

Artistry
Self-portrait with family, c. 1820,
Art Studies Behnhaus
Born 3 July 1789
Overbeck left Lübeck in March 1806, and studied at the
Lübeck, Holy Roman
academy of Vienna, then under the direction of Heinrich
Empire (now Germany)
Friedrich Füger. While he gained some of the polished
technical aspects of the neoclassic painters, he was Died 12 November 1869
alienated by lack of religious spirituality in the themes (aged 80)
chosen by his masters. He wrote to a friend that he had Rome, Papal States (now
fallen among a vulgar set, that every noble thought was Italy)
suppressed within the academy and that losing all faith in Nationality German and naturalized
humanity, he had turned inward to his faith for inspiration. Italian
Education Heinrich Füger in Vienna
In Overbeck's view, the nature of earlier European art had
been corrupted throughout contemporary Europe, starting Known for Painting
centuries before the French Revolution, and the process of Movement Neoclassicism
discarding its Christian orientation was proceeding further
now. He sought to express Christian art before the corrupting influence of the late Renaissance,
casting aside his contemporary influences, and taking as a guide early Italian Renaissance painters,
up to and including Raphael. The training methods at the academy of Vienna were at an
international level; however Overbeck wrote to his father around 1808, was it lacked "heart, soul,
sensation!" Instead of technical skills and slavish studies ("sklavisches Studium") exercising and
working "with a pure heart" ("in einem reinen Herzen") would aim to a renewal of art.[3] Together
with other disaffected young artists at the academy, he started a group named the Lukasbund,[4]

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dedicated to exploring his alternative vision for art. After four

years, the differences between his group and others in the
academy had grown so irreconcilable, that Overbeck and his
followers were expelled.

Career
He left for Rome, where he arrived in 1810, carrying his half-
finished canvas of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem. Rome became
the centre of his labor for 59 years. He was joined by a
company of like-minded artists, including Peter von Cornelius,
Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow and Philipp Veit, who jointly
housed in the old Franciscan convent of Sant'Isidoro, and
became known among friends and enemies by the descriptive
epithet of Nazarenes. Their precept was hard and honest work Easter Morning
and holy living; they eschewed the antique as pagan, the
Renaissance as false, and built up a severe revival on simple
nature and on the serious art of Perugino, Pinturicchio,
Francesco Francia and the young Raphael. The characteristics
of the style thus educed were nobility of idea, precision and
even hardness of outline, scholastic composition, with the
addition of light, shade and colour, not for allurement, but
chiefly for perspicuity and completion of motive. Overbeck in
1813 joined the Roman Catholic Church, and thereby he
believed that his art received Christian baptism. It has been
suggested that the Nazarenes should be considered a special
branch of German Romanticism.[4] Italia und Germania (Albertinum)

Commissions followed regularly. The Prussian consul, Jakob

Salomon Bartholdy, had a house on the brow of the Pincian Hill, called Palazzo Zuccari or Casa
Bartholdy, and he engaged the quartet of Overbeck, Cornelius, Veit and Schadow to fresco a room
7 metres square (now in the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin) with episodes from the story of Joseph
and his Brethren. The subjects which fell to the lot of Overbeck were the Seven Years of Famine
and Joseph sold by his Brethren, finished in 1818. In the same year, Prince Massimo
commissioned Overbeck, Cornelius, Veit and Schnorr to cover the walls and ceilings of his garden
pavilion, near St. John Lateran, with frescoes illustrative of Tasso, Dante and Ariosto. To Overbeck
was assigned, in a room 5 metres square, the illustration of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered; and of
eleven compositions occupying one entire wall, is the Meeting of Godfrey de Bouillon and Peter the
Hermit. After ten years delay, the overtaxed and enfeebled painter delegated the completion of the
frescoes to his friend Joseph von Führich. The leisure thus gained was devoted to a thoroughly
congenial theme, the Vision of St Francis, a wall painting 6.5 metres long, finished in 1830, for the
Porziuncola in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli near Assisi.

Death

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He died in Rome in 1869. He was interred in the Chapel of St Francis in the Church of San
Bernardo alle Terme.[5]

Honours
Overbeck was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
in 1864.[6]

Family
His nephew Johannes Overbeck, a professor of archaeology at the University of Leipzig, was noted
for his work in art history.

Followers
In 1843 the Church of St. John the Baptist, Penymynydd, North Wales was built by the Glynne
Family of Hawarden, Flintshire. The first vicar, Rev. John Ellis Troughton spent the first 20 years
of the life of the church painting the interior with Overbeck murals, including the Palm Sunday one
- of which the original was destroyed in an Allied Bombing raid in 1942, overnight into Palm
Sunday.

Works
Portrait of the Painter Franz Pforra (1810)
Vittoria Caldoni (1821) Epitaph of Friedrich
Christ's Entry into Jerusalem (1824), in the Marienkirche (destroyed Overbeck (1871)
through Allied bombing, Palm Sunday 1942).
Christus am Ölberg (1827-1833)
Italy and Germany (1828)
Christ's Agony in the Garden (1835), in the great hospital,
Hamburg.
Lo Sposalizio (1836), Muzeum Narodowe, Poznań, Poland.
The Triumph of Religion in the Arts (1840), in the Städel
Institute, Frankfurt.
The Banishment of Hagar (1841)[4]
Pietà (1846), in the Marienkirche, Lübeck. The Adoration of the kings
Lamentation of Christ (1846)
The Incredulity of St. Thomas (1851), first in the possession
of Beresford Hope, London, now in the Schäfer collection, Schweinfurt, Germany.
The Assumption of the Madonna (1855), in Cologne Cathedral.
The Ascension of the Virgin Mary (1857)
Christ Delivered from the Jews (1858), tempera, originally on a ceiling in the Quirinal Palace. It
is a commission from Pius IX, and a direct attack on the Italian temporal government, therefore
later covered by a canvas adorned with Cupids, and now hanging in front of the Aula delle
Benedizione in the Vatican.
The Seven Sacraments (sketches are kept in the cathedral of Orvieto) (1861)
Baptism 1862-64, Neue Pinakothek, Munich

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Drawings for the frescoes for the Cathedral of St. Peter and
St. Paul in Đakovo (1867-1869).

References
1. Britannica website (https://www.britannica.com/biography/J
ohann-Friedrich-Overbeck)
2. "Collections Online | British Museum" (https://www.britishm
useum.org/collection/term/BIOG40820).
www.britishmuseum.org. Retrieved 2022-08-17.
3. Howitt, Margaret (1886). Binder, Franz (ed.). Friedrich
Overbeck. Sein Leben und sein Schaffen (in German).
Vol. 1. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herdersche Verlagshandlung.
pp. 71–72.
4. "Johann Friedrich Overbeck (German, 1789-1869)",
Christie's, December 13, 2016 (https://www.christies.com/e
n/lot/lot-6049042)
St. Agnes goes to heaven, lamb of
5. "The Church of San Bernardo alle Terme", Turismo Roma, innocence
Major Events, Sport, Tourism and Fashion Department (http
s://www.turismoroma.it/en/places/chiesa-san-bernardo-alle-
terme)
6. "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter O" (http://www.am
acad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterO.pdf)
(PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved
13 September 2016.

Sources
Lionel Gossman. “Making of a Romantic Icon: The Johann Overbeck graphite pencil
Religious Context of Friedrich Overbeck’s ‘Italia und drawing
Germania.’” American Philosophical Society, 2007. ISBN 0-
87169-975-3. at dianepub.wordpress.com (http://dianepub.
wordpress.com/2010/06/30/lionel-gossman-making-of-a-ro
mantic-icon-the-religious-context-of-friedrich-overbeck%E
2%80%99s-italia-und-germaniaamerican-philosophical-soci
ety-transaction-97-5-isbn-0871699753/)
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
public domain: Atkinson, Joseph Beavington (1911).
"Overbeck, Johann Friedrich". Encyclopædia Britannica.
Vol. 20 (11th ed.). p. 383.
Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905).
"Overbeck, Johann Friedrich" (https://en.wikisource.org/wik
i/The_New_International_Encyclop%C3%A6dia/Overbeck,
_Johann_Friedrich). New International Encyclopedia Early Christians were punished,
(1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead. young Agnes family stood for Christ.
She was killed and became a
martyr.
External links
Johann Friedrich Overbeck in the "History of Art" (http://www.all-art.org/neoclasscism/overbeck
1.html)
Italy and Germany Reproduction (https://www.topofart.com/artists/Johann_Friedrich_Overbeck/
art_reproduction/852/Italia_and_Germania.php)

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Overbeck by J. Beavington Atkinson, 1882, (London:

Sampson Low, Marston), 114 pages (https://books.google.c
om/books?id=XnH_RZMHClsC) at Google Books
German masters of the nineteenth century: paintings and
drawings from the Federal Republic of Germany (http://libm
ma.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15
324coll10/id/71300), a full text exhibition catalog from The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on
Johann Friedrich Overbeck (no. 66-68)

Christ's Entry into Jerusalem

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