Italia und Germania - Friedrich Overbeck
(Neue Pinakotek, Munich)

Painted between 1811 and 1820, the painting is based on a chalk drawing of Shulamit und Mary. Shulamit, a Jewish woman named in verse 7 of Solomon's Song, rests her head against Mary the symbol of Christian motherhood.

Although this work is most known for being representational of the underlying foundation of German heritage, Italia und Germania was actually initially a response to Franz Pforr's 1810 diptych Sulamith und Maria. Originally, what started out in 1815 as tribute to Pforr's earlier work, Overbeck's composition of the same women, changed dramatically during the painting process, in which the content and meaning were modified. While painting Italia und Germania, Overbeck wrote to his friend Friedrich Ludwig Zacharias Werner (a German poet, dramatist and preacher):

"Italia and Germania are both somewhat elements, that on one hand, confront each other with a foreign presence,but however my mission is now to melt them into one. It is on one hand a tribute to the homeland and on the other, a charm of everything beautiful and lordly, for which I am thankful to enjoy presently"

Overbeck paraphrases Pforr's work by bringing both women together, romanticizing their friendship. They are taken out of their clearly separated lives and brought together for a completely different feeling than Pforr intented. Many details, such as iconographical elements which make Sulamith und Maria an unique work of art, are left out. Stylistically the compostition had become simplified and smoothed, making it distinctly Venetian in style. There is also an introduction of religious intention, which is essential for Ovebeck's style. The sibling-like connection between the two women embodies the typological scheme of biblical interpretations through phases of art history. This comparison indicates transition in which the Old Testament paved the way for the New Testament, while connecting Germany's heritage to Italy. The message of Italia und Germania is not one of violence or political disputes, but a harmonious melting of two peoples. The nationalistic elements of Italia und Germania are also combined in a way much different from Pforr's original use. The traits which signify the women's respective backgrounds are not removed, but rather softly incorporated. Behind Italia, an Etruscan villa sprawls across the landscape and the Mediterranean sits below the horizon. Behind Germania lays a gothic city with buildings towering one above the over and the majestic Alps mask the horizon. Both figures wear traditional garments and laurel wreaths on their heads unifying them.

Italia und Germania embodied many of the symptomatic characteristics of the Romantic period. The strong romantic quality of aspiration or longing is unmistakable: the north drawing firmly from the south, from its art, its nature, its poetry. Overbeck most likely intended that we witness an ecclesiastical aura, seen traditionally in Christian art, a formation of a sensitive sublime between beings. Italia und Germania features a pair of women: one a chosen woman and the other the messenger coming to give notice to the other and make her conscious of what she possesses. Overbeck discovers a new holy story in Italia und Germania: the artistic rebirth, which is the result of the cooperation of both Italian and German art. To paraphrase in Overbeck's own words:

"Behind Italia and the laurel wreath in her hair, is an idealistic Italian landscape with mountains, water and a hermitage. A Gothic fantasy town appears behind curly, blond haired Germania and her myrtle wreath. Courting Italia her two hands hold Italia's hand. It seems that Italia gently condescends."

The foundation myth of Nazarenism, the call for a union of northern and southern spirit, of Italia and Germania is dominant. In 1829, Overbeck conceded the utopian character of his painting when he admitted that Italia and Germania are two elements that "may stand apart from one another" forever, but that "it is and shall remain my task to fuse [them] together, at least in the outward form of my creation." Defining the marriage of Italia and Germania as an "idea that continually renews itself," he characterized this fusion as a regenerative force incessantly sustaining artistic practice, thus harking back to the early Romantic idea of universal poetry, with its implication of perpetual becoming. At the same time, weary of the paradigm's unnerving openness, Overbeck tried to control it through the respectability, legibility, and age value of his old-master models.

Skeptical of the classical canon and academic art instruction at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna, recently closed by the French occupation, artists Franz Pforr (1788–1812) and Friedrich Overbeck (1789–1869) found the Brotherhood of Saint Luke(Lukasbrüder). Members of the fraternity adhere to the artistic goals of fidelity to nature and emotional purity, drawing inspiration from late medieval and early Renaissance painting, notably the works of Dürer and Raphael. When the Akademie is reopened in 1810, many of its students are denied readmission, and the Lukasbrüder relocates to Rome, settling in the abandoned monastery of Sant'Isidoro; here the artists emulate a monastic lifestyle of poverty and chastity, wearing long cloaks, growing their hair long, and, above all, imbuing their art with a fervent sincerity of emotion and religious faith. This lifestyle, combined with the artists' spiritual subject matter, earns them, around 1817, the pejorative nickname Die Nazarener: the Nazarenes.

The provocation of a religious revivalism started with Europe's witness of the violence of the French Revolution of 1789. Scaring many followers of the Enlightenment, the revolution threatened the beliefs in the ingenuity of man and that his reason could guide humanity. Literature across Europe was influenced by this. In the Christianity of Europe, German poet Novalis reflected upon the Middle Ages as a time when society harmoniously functioned based not on reason, but faith. Novalis viewed the French Revolution simply as a consequence of the Reformation. In literature there was much philosophical debate over the value of past culture which lead to the rise of Neoclassicism. The Napoleonic invasion after the revolution sparked a new sense of patriotism in Germans, which inspired the formations of a new government based on those of Prussian and French occupations. Germans began to long for sense of identity, the solutions to which they believed lay in the past. Paradoxically, the Romantic period is considered a medieval and religious revivalism, but it is also held to be anti-classicist.

The Romantic period finds its roots as an insurgence against Neoclassicism which was the dominating premise of the late eighteenth century. Neoclassicism was based on the philosophical writings of Johann Winckelmann. It was Winckelmann's short text "Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture" that incited an international neoclassical movement across civilized Europe. It was his belief that with the effort to imitate the classical "noble simplicity and quiet grandeur" that the lost virtues of the ancients could be found. These ideas of a German art critic were not only regional in influence, but impacted many European academies.

Although Winckelmann's neoclassicism focused on the human figure and classical composition, around the turn of the century painting progressed into a primacy of portraiture and landscape of the mid- to late Romantic period. The transition involved is often credited to the work of the Nazarenes. Their new study of form and reality justified art becoming an expression of nature, moreover a magnum opus of God. This Neo-Platonism was of critical importance to the Nazarenes, a pivotal group in Romantic beginnings.

Like most Romantic artists Overbeck was highly influenced by fourteenth and fifteenth century painters as well as those of the High Renaissance era. Particularly taken with the great Renaissance painter Raphael, Overbeck went to great lengths to imitate his Venetian style. Distinguished from works of fellow artists Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, Raphael's figures are noticeably painted with a very distinct style of chiaroscuro, for a very smooth, finished appearance free of evident brush strokes. Overbeck developed a very similar style to that of Raphael's, however with fundamental differences. Primarily, Overbeck compositionally simplified the work, focusing on form and shading to create very soft emotional subjects. The strong religious motifs of the Renassiance (attributed to church patrons) were also very prevelent in nineteenth century German art.

The Nazarenes who fought the neoclassical canon and redefined High Renaissance ideals looked critically to the past as well as to the future. It was this that made them the first Modern movement. Overbeck contributed to this through his development of an early German style by synthesizing the late Gothic and Italian Renaissance. This was clearly not simply a reaction to stylistic preference, but rather a society's reaction to a changing world. In the end we can see how Overbeck's Italia and Germania accurately enbodies the Romantic Zeitgeist.

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