Cordula Grewe . Painting the Sacred in the Age of Romanticism . (Histories of Vision.) Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing Company. 2009. Pp. xvii, 418. $99.95.
2012; Oxford University Press; Volume: 117; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1086/ahr.117.1.287
ISSN1937-5239
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Art and Culture Studies
ResumoIn 1809 six young German painters, led by Johann Friedrich Overbeck and Franz Pforr, banded together in Vienna to swear their allegiance to each other and to their belief in art's divine mission. The Lukasbrüder (Brotherhood of St. Luke) soon attracted, among others, Peter von Cornelius, Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow, and Philipp Veit. Moving to Rome, they lived and worked collectively in a monastery. The locals dubbed these long‐haired, earnest, and mystical Germans I Nazareni (The Nazarenes). By 1820 most had returned to Germany to assume academic positions, though Overbeck remained in Rome until 1869, where his studio became a popular pilgrimage site. The Nazarenes' proselytizing Christian work swam against the stream of nineteenth‐century painting's progression toward secularism, aestheticism, and art‐for‐art's sake that formed the basis of twentieth‐century modernist abstraction. Or did it? This is a central question posed by Cordula Grewe's deeply researched, richly nuanced, and readable re‐evaluation of the course and the content of Nazarene art and its relation to its context and to what was to come. She argues that Nazarene art developed innovative aesthetic strategies and represents an important and too little recognized strand within the faith‐based roots of nineteenth and twentieth‐century modernism. Like the Pre‐Raphaelite Brotherhood, the Lukasbrüder set a precedent for the French Nabis (Prophets) and other Symbolists. While the Nazarenes eschewed abstraction, Grewe argues convincingly that they shared the modern commitment to art itself as a sacred calling, often casting themselves in the role of observer in the sacred scenes they portrayed. Grewe argues against the modernism‐equals‐secularization thesis, as do David Morgan (The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice [2005]) and Sally M. Promey (Painting Religion in Public: John Singer Sargent's “Triumph of Religion” at the Boston Public Library [1999]), as well as scholars such as Ziva Amishai‐Maisels, Matthew Baigell, and Samantha Baskind, who explore the persistent presence of Jewish belief and culture in twentieth‐century art.
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