Nazarenes (art)

Nazarenes (art), group of German painters of the 19th-century romantic period, who attempted to revive in their art the ideals of medieval Christian religious feeling. Living communally in Rome, they painted several large fresco series between 1816 and 1829. Believing that all art since the mid-1500s was corrupt—an empty display of virtuosity—they sought inspiration in the work of earlier artists, mainly the Italian painters Raphael, Fra Angelico, and Perugino and the German painter Albrecht Dürer. The most talented in the group were Johann Friedrich Overbeck and Peter von Cornelius; their paintings—along with those of the rest of the group—seem to modern critics stilted and awkward, and their best work is to be found in their simple landscape and portrait drawings. See also Pre-Raphaelites.