- Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld
Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (
march 26 1794 -May 24 1872 ) was a German painter.Biography
Schnorr was born at
Leipzig , where he received his earliest instruction from his father Johann Veit Schnorr (1764-1841), a draughtsman, engraver and painter.At seventeen he entered the Academy of Vienna, from which
Johann Friedrich Overbeck and others who rebelled against the old conventional style had been expelled about a year before. In 1818 he followed the founders of the new artistic brotherhood, theNazarene movement in their pilgrimage toRome . This school of religious and romantic art abjured modern styles and reverted to and revived the principles and practice of earlier periods. At the outset an effort was made to recover fresco painting and monumental art, and Schnorr found opportunity of proving his powers, when commissioned to decorate with frescoes, illustrative ofAriosto , the entrance hail of the Villa Massimo, near the Lateran. His fellow-laborers were Cornelius, Overbeck and Veit.His second period dates from 1825, when he left Rome, settled in
Munich , entered the service of King Ludwig, and transplanted to Germany the art of wall-painting learned in Italy. He showed himself qualified as a sort of poet-painter to the Bavarian court; he organized a staff of trained executants, and set about clothing five halls in the new palace with frescoes illustrative of theNibelungenlied . Other apartments his prolific pencil decorated with scenes from the histories ofCharlemagne ,Frederick Barbarossa andRudolph of Habsburg . These interminable compositions are creative, learned in composition, masterly in drawing, but exaggerated in thought and extravagant in style.Schnorr's third period is marked by his biblical illustrations. The artist was a
Lutheran , and took a broad and un-sectarian view which won for his Pictorial Bible ready currency throughout Christendom. Frequently the compositions are crowded and confused, wanting in harmony of line and symmetry in the masses; thus they suffer under comparison withRaphael 's "Bible". The style is severed from the simplicity and severity of early times, and surrendered to the florid redundance of the later Renaissance. Yet throughout are displayed fertility of invention, academic knowledge with facile execution. Biblical drawings and cartoons for frescoes formed a natural prelude to designs for church windows.The painter's renown in Germany secured commissions in Great Britain. Schnorr made designs, carried out in the royal factory, Munich, for windows in
Glasgow cathedral and inSt Paul's Cathedral ,London . This Munich glass provoked controversy: medievalists objected to its want of lustre, and stigmatized the windows as coloured blinds and picture transparencies. But the opposing party claimed for these modern revivals the union of the severe and excellent drawing of early Florentine oil-paintings with the colouring and arrangement of the glass-paintings of the latter half of the 16th century.Schnorr died at Munich in 1872. His brother Ludwig Ferdinand (1789-1853) was also a painter.
References
External links
* [http://www.wels.net/wmc/html/clip_art_--_volume_1__part_a.html Woodcuts by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld]
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