Peter von Cornelius

Peter von Cornelius (Sep 23, 1783 - Mar 6, 1867) was a German painter

Cornelius was the son of Johann Christian Aloys Cornelius (1748-1800), painter, lecturer at the Düsseldorf Academy and director of the Düsseldorf gallery, and his wife Anna Helena, born Cossé His birthplace was located on Kurzenstraße 15 in the old town of Düsseldorf His first artistic training, like his brother Lambert, he learned from his father

From 1798 to about 1805 studied Cornelius at the Düsseldorf academy In the years 1803 to 1805 he took part in the Weimar prizewinners of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe In 1807/1807 he created wall paintings in the Quirinus-Münster of Neuss After his mother passed away on June 2, 1809, Cornelius traveled to Koblenz in the autumn of 1809, where he lived from 1809 to 1811 in the house of a patron, the publisher Friedrich Wilmans; Two pictures of Wilmans and his wife In 1811 he went to Rome together with his friend Christian Xeller, worked in the Casa Bartholdy and became friends there with the painter Friedrich Overbeck The latter took him into the Lukasbund, which is considered the germ cell of the Nazarenes

In 1816, his sequence of illustrations appeared in Goethe's Faust, with which he abandoned his baroque classicism and turned to neo-Gothic forms The painters Ernst Ludwig Riepenhausen and Franz Pforr can be regarded as predecessors

From 1819 to 1824, Cornelius was director of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, which had founded the kingdom of Prussia in 1819 Cornelius and his successor, Wilhelm von Schadow, created the academic foundations of the Düsseldorf School of Painting there

In 1819 Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria called Cornelius for an order to Munich There he was to reorganize the Glyptothek among other things Although the relationship between artists and rulers was very difficult, Cornelius was entrusted with the management of the Academy of Fine Arts there in 1825 and knighted by the now Bavarian King Ludwig I In support of his many-sided tasks, Cornelius brought with him some of his pupils from Düsseldorf, such as Hermann Anschütz, Wilhelm Kaulbach and Adam Eberle, who later joined Moritz von Schwind 1841 came to the disagreement with the king and Cornelius moved to Berlin

The Prussian King Frederick William IV entrusted him with the artistic design of the planned new cathedral building and the cemetery hall next to it, also known by the king as Campo Santo Count Atanazy Raczyński handed him the south wing of his palace as a studio In 1843, Cornelius entered the Lawless Society of Berlin Since the cathedral building planned by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV did not go beyond the work on the foundations and the Campo Santo was not completely completed, the designs on which Cornelius worked for almost 20 years could never be put into practice In 1860 he became a member of the Munich Association for Christian Art When, in 1862, Peter von Cornelius became an honorary citizen of the city of Düsseldorf, the artist's association Malkasten gave him a feast in honor of the Geisler'sche Lokal and Jacobi'sche Garten

The fresco decorations of the Ludwigskirche in Munich, which were for the most part designed and executed by Cornelius, were perhaps the most important mural works of their time The large fresco of the Last Judgment, over the high altar in that church, measures 62 feet (19 m) in height by 38 feet (12 m) in width The frescoes of the Creator, the Nativity, and the Crucifixion in the same building are also upon a large scale Other major works in Munich included his decorations in the Pinakothek and in the Glyptothek; those in the latter building, in the hall of the gods and the hall of the hero-myths, are perhaps the best known In about 1839–40 he left Munich for Berlin to work on a series of cartoons, depicting the Apocalypse, for a cycle of frescoes commissioned by Frederick William IV for a proposed "Campo Santo" or royal mausoleum in Berlin The king abandoned his plans following the revolution of 1848, but Cornelius continued to work on the cartoons for the rest of his life

He maintained close contact with the art world in Rome, and returned to live there between 1853 and 1869

Style and technique:
Cornelius, as an oil painter, possessed little technical skill, nor do his works exhibit any instinctive appreciation of colour Even as a fresco painter his manipulative power was not great And in critically examining the execution in colour of some of his magnificent designs, one cannot help feeling that he was, in this respect, unable to do them full justice Cornelius and his associates endeavoured to follow in their works the spirit of the Italian painters But the Italian strain is to a considerable extent modified by the Dürer heritage This Dürer influence is manifest in a tendency to overcrowding in composition, in a degree of attenuation in the proportions of, and a poverty of contour in, the nude figure, and also in a leaning to the selection of Gothic forms for draperies These peculiarities are even noticeable in Cornelius's principal work of the "Last Judgment," in the Ludwigskirche in Munich

The attenuation and want of flexibility of contour in the nude are perhaps most conspicuous in his frescoes of classical subjects in the Glyptothek, especially in that representing the contention for the body of Patroclus But despite these peculiarities there is always in his works a grandeur and nobility of conception Although not dexterous in the handling of the brush, he could conceive and design a subject with masterly purpose If he had an imperfect eye for colour, he had vast mental foresight in directing the German school of painting; and his favorite motto of "Deutschland uber alles" indicates the direction and the strength of his patriotism His pupils included Karl Hermann, Wilhelm von Kaulbach and Adam Eberle Cornelius often relied on pupils and assistants for the execution, and sometimes even the design of the projects of which he was in charge The cartoons for the Glyptothek were all by Cornelius's own hand; in the Pinakothek, however his sketches and small drawings sufficed, and at the Ludwigskirche even the invention of some of the subjects was entrusted to Hermann


Works:
In his monumental works, he attempted to revive German frescos, whereby his true talent is less evident in color than in the figure drawing In his later work, he leaned heavily on the classical form of Raphael

1820-30: Frescoes The gods of Greece in the Glyptothek, Munich, lost - cartons in the National Gallery Berlin
1836-40: Altarfresko The Last Judgment and Painting of the Ludwigskirche, Munich
1841-67: The apocalyptic rider, carton, formerly National Gallery Berlin (since 1945 forgotten)
1850: Picture medallions of the prophets of the Old Testament in the church St Nikolai, Potsdam
Frescoes in the Palazzo Zuccari

The Parable of Wise and Foolish Virgins:
The five sagacious virgins cautiously take oil with them to refill their lamps when seeking out the path to Christ The lamps as a symbol of faith have to be filled with the ‘oil of good deeds’ Cornelius was one of the first of the Nazarenes to take up this metaphor of charity and a Christian lifestyle Christ steps out of the door to Paradise, held open by St Peter, and takes the sagacious virgins kneeling before him into the Heavenly Jerusalem By contrast, the fatuous virgins are still queuing for oil at a shop Referencing the Last Judgment and the promise of salvation, that the Kingdom of God shall begin with Christ’s Coming, this piece of religious instruction reflects on the debate on issues of faith at that time First sketched in 1813 in Orvieto, Cornelius continued working on it until 1816 in Florence, but it remained incomplete In 1819, before leaving Rome, he gave it to J A Koch as a gift The sculptor Thorvaldsen took it to Copenhagen, where he created the "Blessing Christ" for the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen, which draws on Cornelius’ figure of Christ It did not get given back to Koch’s heirs until 1848

Joseph interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams:
From July 1816 to the summer of 1817, five young German artists of the so-called ‘Lukasbund’ [Brotherhood of St Luke] – Wilhelm Schadow, Philipp Veit, Franz Catel, Friedrich Overbeck, and Peter Cornelius – painted a room in the Palazzo Zuccari in Rome, the official quarters of the Prussian Consul General, Jakob Salomon Bartholdy The paintings are now housed in the Alte Nationalgalerie (Berlin) The attempt to invest the traditional art of the monumental fresco with a new public prestige thus began in a small, semi-private context; Christian subjects were particularly favoured for this purpose
This sketch depicts the Old Testament passage from the Book of Moses (1:41) where the young Joseph interprets the Pharaoh’s dream of the seven fat and the seven lean years The composition differs from the mural, which, following a handful of alterations, was later realized by Philipp Veit
https://hisour.com/artist/peter-von-cornelius/