Veit
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
PHILIPP (fit), a German painter; born in Berlin, Prussia, Feb. 13, 1793. His mother, a daughter of Moses Mendelssohn, had for her second husband Friedrich Schlegel and Veit became devotedly attached to the religious and artistic ideas of his stepfather, like whom he embraced Catholicism. After finishing his studies at Dresden, he proceeded to Rome in 1815, and became a prominent member of that band of young German painters who sought to infuse into modern art the purity and earnestness of medieval times. Of all the associates Veit ventured farthest into the obscure realms of symbolism and allegory. His first famous work the " Seven Years of Plenty, " executed as a companion piece to Overbeck's " Seven Years of Dearth, " and forming part of a series of frescoes illustrative of the history of Joseph, painted at the Villa Bartholdy in Rome. Other pictures of his Roman period are: " The Triumph of Religion " ( Vatican), " Scenes from Dante's Paradiso " ( Massimi Villa), and an altarpiece, representing "Mary Queen his admiration of Heaven, " in the Trinità de ' Monti. These procured him so great a reputation that he was called in 1830 to the directorship of the Art Institute in Frankfort - on - the - Main. While holding this position he produced many grand pictures, of which the most celebrated is the large fresco (at the Institute) representing "Christianity Bringing the Fine Arts to Germany." In 1843 he removed to Sachsenhausen, opposite Frankfort, in 1853 to Mainz. He died in Mainz, Dec. 18, 1877.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The facts Collier's set down in 1921 still stand: Philipp Veit, grandson of Moses Mendelssohn and stepson of Friedrich Schlegel, was a leading Nazarene painter who died at Mainz in 1877. What has shifted is what he is remembered for. Collier's singles out the Villa (Casa) Bartholdy frescoes and the Frankfurt allegory "Christianity Bringing the Fine Arts to Germany"; today he is best known outside art history for "Germania," the female personification of the nation that hung above the assembly of the 1848 Frankfurt Parliament in the Paulskirche and became one of the standard images of German nationhood. The Casa Bartholdy frescoes themselves were cut from the walls and taken to Berlin in the 1880s, so the Roman setting Collier's describes no longer holds them, and the Nazarenes, long dismissed as pious and stiff, have been re-examined sympathetically by scholars since the later 20th century.
Written for this edition, 2026.