Nazarenes

The Nazarenes were a group of German Romantic painters founded in 1809 whose aim was to revive German painting through a return to the sincerity and spiritual purity of early Renaissance and medieval art. The association arose in Vienna under the name the Brotherhood of Saint Luke (Lukasbund), and soon its members moved to Rome, where they settled in the disused monastery of San Isidoro. The founders of the movement were Friedrich Overbeck and Franz Pforr, later joined by Peter von Cornelius, Wilhelm Schadow, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld and others. The nickname Nazarenes was given to them jokingly on account of their pious way of life, their long hair in the manner of images of Christ and their emphatic religiosity. The artists sought to restore moral and spiritual seriousness to art by emulating Raphael, Perugino, Dürer and other masters before the Mannerist age, and they favoured religious and historical subjects, clear line, bright colour and fresco painting. The Nazarenes revived interest in monumental fresco and had a significant influence on nineteenth-century religious art, as well as indirectly on the English Pre-Raphaelites, who shared similar ideals.