Art studies 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. 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 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. 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==