Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld was a German painter born at Leipzig to Johann Veit Schnorr (1764-1841), a draughtsman, engraver and painter. His father provided young Julius his first instruction in art. At seventeen Julius entered the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts*, from which Johann Friedrich Overbeck and others who rebelled against the old conventional style had been expelled about a year before.

Schnorr followed the founders of the new artistic brotherhood, the Nazarene movement*, in their pilgrimage to Rome in 1815. This school of religious and romantic art tended to reject 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 monu...