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Concept
Johann Friedrich Overbeck
Summary
Johann Friedrich Overbeck (3 July 1789 - 12 November 1869) was a German painter and a founder of the Nazarene art movement.
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.
Overbeck left Lübeck in March 1806, and studied at the academy of Vienna, then under the direction of Heinrich Friedrich Füger. While he gained some of the polished technical aspects of the neoclassic painters, he was alienated by lack of religious spirituality in the themes chosen by his masters. He wrote to a friend that he had fallen among a vulgar set, that every noble thought was suppressed within the academy and that losing all faith in humanity, he had turned inward to his faith for inspiration.
In Overbeck's view, the nature of earlier European art had been corrupted throughout contemporary Europe, starting centuries before the French Revolution, and the process of 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. Together with other disaffected young artists at the academy, he started a group named the Lukasbund, dedicated to exploring his alternative vision for art.
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