[Letters of the Artists of the Nineteenth Century] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert. Edited by Else Cassirer. Part Two

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[Letters of the Artists of the Nineteenth Century]
Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert
[Edited by Else Cassirer]
Berlin, Bruno Cassirer Verlag, 1913 [on the cover page] / 1914 [in the frontispiece], 710 pages, with 150 illustrations.

Review by Francesco Mazzaferro
Part Two

Fig. 28) Edward Jakob von Steinle, Portrait of the daughter Agnes, 1848

Go Back to Part One

The selection of German artists and their letters

Who are the German artists whom Else Cassirer selected for her Letters of artists? How did she choose their letters? And what image of the nineteenth century did this selection offer us?

On this theme, the introduction of the Letters contains some considerations only in negative terms, which I think are too brief: "In the choice of artists, we have not always been able to adhere to the directives that we had set ourselves at the beginning. We wanted to give the floor to the most important artists, and the number of their letters should have been proportional to the degree of their artistic and individual importance. And yet, it was possible to achieve this goal only partially. Many artists' letters are in fact not accessible or lost and can no longer be traced. In addition, with the passage of generations, the desire of the artists to communicate by letter has declined. In general, the German artists wrote more than the French; the Nazarenes are more passionate and articulated writers, while the Impressionists showed much less enthusiasm; and finally the most significant talents are often the ones who are the most silent." [29]

Fig. 29) Carl Blechen, Night storm with lighthouse, about 1826

To understand more, it is perhaps useful to return briefly to the pages of the magazine Art and artists of 1911. There it was explained - as already mentioned in the first part of this post - that the German artists were selected on the basis of two criteria: those whose texts were mostly aiming at seeking their inspirational sources in the past and those that aimed instead at guiding and shaping the aesthetic preferences of the rising bourgeoisie. It is a categorization that may also be applied to the anthology of 1913, although we should not read it too mechanistically. On the one hand, there are those artists who in fact - in their letters - seemed to first look back to the world of antique and Renaissance and later on to Middle Ages as the ideal place of the spirit. They were an integral part of the historicist culture that was a common trait of the nineteenth century (think of the swift development of archaeology and philology in those years), not only in Germany.

Fig. 30) Erwin Speckter, The Appearance of Christ before the three Maries, 1829

On the other hand, there are those artists who, in the development of art production, were aiming to adapt in the evolutionary way to the new needs and aesthetic preferences of the emerging German bourgeoisie: they are developing a new urban style in Berlin and major German centres, responding first to the court preferences and then to those of the market.

Fig. 31) Gottfried Keller, Heroic landscape, 1842

In the balance between the two groups represented in the Letters of artists, it seems to me that the first tendency prevails: the stream which seeks the foundations of present in the distant past. Perhaps, it is also an endogenous factor: those artists who had a strong awareness of the intellectual link between art, history and philosophy may have shown a more pronounced tendency to put their theoretical considerations in writing, including in the correspondence with other artists. Obviously, the examination of the letters reveals that there have been thousand overlaps and shared elements between the two groups, and there are letters of artists whose reading shows that they combined both streams.

Fig. 32) Friedrich Karl Haussmann, Paris street children (1852)

Still, the analysis of the Letters of artists offers a reading of the nineteenth century art as dominated by the concern for the recovery and the re-interpretation of the past. On the contrary, the reading generally given today to the art of that century is that it marked the final completion of the transition from the ancient to the modern regime. The difference in perspective is very clear and reflects an objective factor: the anthology was still conceived in the first decade of the twentieth century, when the idea of overall continuity in the development of art history still prevailed, and was published when the old Hohenzollern regime had not yet been swept away. Today, the reader knows that a few months after the publication of the Letters of artists their world was eventually turned upside down, and that the following twentieth century art would be subject to permanent discontinuities. To the reader of 1913 Else Cassirer provided instead a rich testimony of the noble aesthetic tradition that the German world was inheriting, thanks to the last three to four generations of artists; a legacy that was still intact and that, in the expectations of that time, would develop in the sense of a confirmation of the underlying trends.

In 1913 the most radical avant-garde art had already made scandal in the city. And yet, the day when the book reached the Berlin libraries, most likely much of the public bought it with the idea that the future course would follow up the great art lines of the recent past. The readers of those months wanted indeed to recognize in the world of the artists of the nineteenth century the ultimate sources of inspiration of the best art of their days. Else Cassirer itself was, in fact, the expression of the nineteenth-century society, still dominated by small cultured elites, and convinced to have reached stable condition of wealth under the guidance of Prussia, whose kingdom was now extended to the whole of Germany. 

Fig. 33) The 1923 version of the Letters of artists 

And yet, if the traditionalist setting of the first version of 1913 is understandable, it is really astonishing that the editions of 1919 [30] and 1923 [31] did not reveal any significant differences (the text was only slightly reduced by about fifty pages, cutting the most intimate pages), a sign that even the most educated bourgeoisie in the Berlin of the twenties was not fully able to grasp the signs of the upheaval that was going to take place.

Art, friendships and brotherhoods

Fig. 34) Johann Friedrich Overbeck, Cornelius and Overbeck, 1812

One of the dimensions which is revealed by the Letters is that the world of the young artists was often a world of friends or, by adopting the religious model, of even real brotherhoods, starting from the Brotherhood of St. Luke founded by the Nazarenes in 1809. The German artists (and not only those belonging to fraternities) wrote to each other all the time, especially when some of them were living abroad and others in Germany. The letters reveal many cases of absolute altruism, with artists withdrawing from commissions received in favour of others. Instead, I found only a few cases in which the letters are revealing mutual dislikes or even very serious rivalries: I wonder whether Else Cassirer did perhaps not censor them, to describe the world of the artists in such idyllic terms.

Here is how Peter von Cornelius described the Brotherhood of St. Luke to the painter Karl Moßler in 1812: "Now a few words about my brothers of cloister. It is a brotherhood of men with exceptional qualities. They are a brotherhood for art and for all what is good, and they love each other and are mutually dependent on each other. They are six: five here [in Rome] and one in Vienna. Overbeck, born in Lübeck, has rallied all the others thanks to the mildness of his soul and the strength of his noble spirit, and instilled enthusiasm in them. I think he might be the greatest living artists and I think you would be amazed if you could see his works. At the same time, he is the personification of modesty and humility. You already know Pforr’s works; he has the noblest and most reliable heart in the world, and a secure attachment to anything that he considers true, but also a force that often borders on harshness, and often damaged him. A lung disease kept him in bed since I have come here, and made him milder and tender, but God wanted to shorten the time of his trial and granted him the joy and the security that his noble heart so deserved [editor's note: Pforr died in Rome in 1812]. Vogel, born in Zurich, is one of the most vigorous and naturally gifted men. With open heart and spirit he catches everything beautiful, good and generous that nature delivers to the souls of men, to bring them together. He can sense the existence of the mutual relations between people's hearts in such a pure and human way as I had never experienced, also possessing an exceptional artistic talent. He paints subjects of Swiss history in an exceptional way. In addition to a sense of openness to all what is good and beautiful, the Swabian Wintergest possesses all those qualities to which today one does not give any more attention and are thus called minor virtues: humility, loyalty, gratitude, care up to submission, attachment and love. He works in the style of Michelangelo and is extremely active and zealous" [32]. He added: "Ours is a Republican association. So everyone has to win over the hearts of others, because it is love which creates the bound. And here nobody can give orders to anyone, he must act himself; in fact, everybody is for all an issue of life or death" [33]. It is the description of an ideal world of equals.

Fig. 35) Peter von Cornelius, Deposition, 1819

But here are some examples of how the letters document that the artists helped and comforted each other: the classicist painter Gottlieb Schick wrote to Schelling in 1808 to inform him that Koch and Thorwaldsen needed financial support in Rome [34]. The Nazarene painter Schnoor von Carolsfeld praised his cloister brother Cornelius in 1818 [35] and the latter recommended Schnorr von Carolsfeld to a minister in 1824 [36]. In 1835, the other Nazarene Overbeck expressed, in a letter to Steinle, great feelings of friendship vis-à-vis Cornelius [37] and Veith [38]. Now old, in 1869, Overbeck then wrote to Cornelius: "In the spirit, I am throwing myself into your arms, to tell you how unforgettable were and will remain the days that you wanted to donate me and how this gift has been crowned by this letter of yours, so rich in content. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all, and also for the story of your trip, which reminded me so vital souvenirs in our youth" [39].

Fig. 36) Peter von Cornelius, Joseph interprets the dreams of Pharaoh, Fresco cycle of the Bartholdy house in Palazzo Zuccari, Rome - now at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, 1816-1817)

The geographical mobility of art centres

The German section of the Letters of the artists of the nineteenth century also offers us, in its 430 pages, an impression of the continuous geographical mobility of the nineteenth century German art centres: Rome, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Munich, Vienna, Frankfurt, Dresden, Paris, Berlin. With this I mean the mutating success of the geographical centres of influence on taste and style, in competition among each other within a vast area, which culturally included also Austria and German-speaking Switzerland, and of course all then German and now Polish, Baltic and Russian regions. This area was politically diverse and characterised by the rivalry between courts, which tried to anchor the best traditions in their respective territory. Moreover, it also included two external centres: Rome and Paris. In many respects, indeed, Rome and Paris played a crucial role in the formation of the German artistic taste. The German art world was and remained so polycentric to include locations from outside its own linguistic area.

One can safely say that the first centre of development of the nineteenth-century German art was Rome. This reflected a classicist taste that had been introduced in the German world by Winckelmann in the eighteenth century. In a letter from Rome to Johann Friedrich Rochlitz (writer, poet and music critic), the Nazarene Julius Schnoor von Carolsfeld explained that "Rome did not damage the birth of a new German art, but it very much favoured it. Rome was really the most appropriate place to accommodate the German artist in these special times" [40]. He then clarified that the German public of those years was vehemently opposed to new artistic trends; the young artists were not finding recognition in Germany and therefore could not consider any place as their home. "In these conditions, Italy appears to be the best that one could find, both for its nature and for its artistic treasures. For this double impact on the senses, Italy has a particular effect on the German artist, so austere and yet so ready to be captured by the world of ideas. (...) The foreign country, the foreign customs and the foreign world of the senses, however, have always remained extraneous to them: the German has never been so German as he is here" [41]. Rome was therefore a place of training that did not change, by itself, the national nature of painting by the German artists living there.

Yet Schnorr himself was also the first (at least in this anthology of letters) to mention the need to create a "German Rome", to avoid the need for young German artists to always move abroad: when he spoke on it in 1818, he made it as if he referred to a desire, which would be almost impossible to achieve, hoping that such centre - whatever would be - would recover the role that Cologne might have perhaps played in the distant past [42]. The reference was not accidental: these were the years (as we shall see) where it was decided to rebuild the never completed cathedral of Cologne, just as a symbol of national revival after the Napoleonic domination of the city. 

Fig. 37) Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, The Battle of the six on the island of Lampedusa,
from the cycle of frescoes on Tasso, Casa Massimo, Rome, 1817-1827

Thus, it was the same painter who drafted the same year - i.e. in 1818 - an appeal to the citizens of Lübeck. He sent it to his father by letter, with a request to spread it. He appealed to the municipal community to provide artists with the opportunity to paint public buildings in order to enable young people to learn the craft. He plead, therefore, that Lübeck would offer them the same opportunities as Rome, where the Nazarenes were achieving a success that could be compared to the great artists of the Renaissance: "Everyone knows that the greatest masterpieces of the modern age are concentrated in Rome [editor's note: here are meant the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries], not to mention the Greek antiquities [here understood as Greek-Roman art works]. It is therefore a very positive sign, if a new work of art arouses so much interest to be compared to those of Raphael and Michelangelo. And if many (...) acknowledge to favourably consider such new work in comparison with the immortal art by Raphael, then its value must surely be evident. For some time now, a specific spiritual approach to their own has developed among German artists in Rome. According to the prevailing view, Messrs Peter Cornelius and Friedrich Overbeck have reached a very high degree of training and artistic ability, although one should not leave unnoticed that other artists display great skills and potential to improve, achieving admiration and sympathy. The fame of these two personalities has already strengthened and enlarged. But in Italy, for a long time, the use has consolidated not only to express large appreciation of the qualities of the great artists, but rather to grasp the fleeting moment and to use the best years of youth of a painter, in order to give him great tasks (... ) So, Messrs Cornelius and Overbeck have already been asked to paint two rooms of the palace of the Marquis Massimo with scenes of the poems of Dante and Tasso"  [43]. The Roman fresco cycles in the House Massimo (the Villa Massimo is now the headquarters of the Academy of Germany) and those at the Bartholdy House in the Zuccari Palace (the latter frescos have been detached and moved to Berlin) became collective monuments of the German Nazarenes.

Fig. 38) Anton Koch, The Dante cycle, 1817-1827, The arrival of the redeemed from purgatory,
from the cycle of frescoes on Dante, Massimo House, Rome, 1817-1827

We will see that the relationship between Rome and the German artists did not cease even when the Nazarenes will be replaced by other art streams, first of all the romantics. And yet, if Rome remained a destination for study throughout the nineteenth century, also the desire by Schnorr von Carolsfeld to establish autonomous centres of art production in Germany materialised. It was made possible by the continuous competition between the German-speaking courts (Munich, Dresden, Berlin, Vienna) and the other cities with art tradition (Cologne, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt) in order to attract the best artists. It was a struggle which was often determined by the financial resources that monarchs or municipalities had at their disposal to attract the artists returning from Rome. 

Fig. 39) Peter von Cornelius, Olympus, lost fresco in the Glyptotek in Munich, 1820-1830

Düsseldorf, Berlin and Munich strived for years to host Cornelius, the most important artist re-joining Germany from Rome. He first worked in Düsseldorf (where he animated the painting school of the city) and then moved to Munich (directing the academy) at the request of the king of Bavaria, Ludwig, who was trying to create a court of artists around him, promoting the Bavarian capital as a centre of German and European fine arts. Cornelius then entered into conflict with the monarch and moved to Berlin, attracted by the King of Prussia.

Here is what the illustrator and engraver Gustav König (1808-1869) wrote about the King of Bavaria, in a letter from Munich sent to Schnorr von Carolsfeld in 1857. Stylistically, König was very close to the Nazarenes; in terms of content, he was a religious painter, totally focused on the history of Luther's life. Still, he was a protégé of the faithful Catholic Bavarian monarch, to whom he dedicated an affectionate personal page: "Over the last few years, the old King Ludwig has passed by from time to time to see my works. This cheered me very much: he is to me, I would say, the equivalent of a personified concept, as the representative of an entire age and of the interest that our times have paid to our work. Recently, before his departure for Italy, the king has come back to me and has asked that I would show him the entire work on Luther. He asked me to tell him the whole life of Luther. I have done it with great frankness and he has said many times: 'You are really a very convinced Protestant, I like it, I could never suffer even the half of what you are doing'. And in the same way he spoke at length on Cornelius and the current contemporary art, and I also got to have my say about it" [44].

Fig. 40) Gustave König, Martin Luther is kidnapped while returning from Worms, 1847

Munich could take the baton from Rome especially thanks to the long stay in the city of Cornelius. The Viennese romantic Moritz von Schwind, just arrived in town, wrote about Munich as a hateful town (odioses Nest) in a long letter of 1827 to a poet friend [45]. He was called there by Cornelius, whom he met while he was on the scaffolding to paint several rooms of the Glyptotek (the frescoes were lost in World War II). A few years later, in 1833, von Schwind was rather well integrated in Munich, where he received commissions by the king [46], lived in a house close to that of his teacher (with Cornelius he had, however, bad relations, since von Schwind preferred the romantic style), and also attended Schnorr von Carolsfeld (also back in Munich after the Roman years), with whom he had instead a close friendship.

Fig. 41) Peter von Cornelius, The kingdom of Neptune or the world of water,
lost fresco in the Glyptotek in Munich, 1820-1830

In 1840 the Swiss twenty Gottfried Keller (1819-1890) arrived in Munich defining the city with the biblical term of "promised land" [47]. There, he studied two years without success, before returning to Zurich where he became one of the founding fathers of the Swiss Confederation in 1848. In 1841, still convinced he had chances as a painter in Munich, he reassured the mother, who was concerned about the difficulties the child was encountering: "I have already written you that here any person performing a good job finds a good source of income. Now, my things received the acclaim of artists and older connoisseurs, but are simply not sufficiently refined yet. The great lords do not want only to see paintings that reveal very talented, but also well-designed pictures" [48].

In the first half of the Nineteenth century the fame of Paris was still much lower than the one of Italy. The first references to Paris are therefore linked to short study tours on the edge of longer experiences in Italy. The architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel spent two years in Italy (1803-1804) and returned to Berlin via Paris. In 1840 the painter Carl Steffeck went to Paris two months before a two-year stay in Rome. He was a genre painter: he realized especially paintings of horses and other animals. Just sending recommendations to the young Steffeck, the painter Karl Begas expressed the hope that "your previous trip to Paris would not damage you as much as has happened to others" [49]. This is a reflection of the scepticism that existed in those years in Germany on the Parisian art world. The painter Franz Krüger (1797-1857) thanked the same Steffeck because of a letter he has received from Paris. He appreciated the news on the art life in the French capital, but as a painter of horses himself urged Steffeck never to forget how to paint those animals [50]. In short, even a short stay in Paris was seen in those years as a risk, more than an opportunity.

Fig. 42) Friedrich Carl Hausmann, Galileo facing the board of the Dominicans, 1852

The first of the anthologized artists who travelled to Paris as the main destination for studying abroad, between 1851 and 1854, was Friedrich Carl Hausmann, a genre painter specialised in histories. The formation of Hausmann followed a new route, which went first via Flanders (he made his studies at the Academy of Antwerp) and from there led him to Paris. His letters to his uncle, who was based in Hanau and therefore in a German provincial town, were all concentrated on photography, a sign that Paris was the capital of modernity [51].

Fig. 43) Rudolf Koller, Glacier at the Susten Pass, 1856

In 1847-1848 the Swiss Rudolf Koller followed the same route as Hausmann: he first arrived in Belgium (Brussels, Antwerp) and then from there reached Paris, where he made the acquaintance of the Barbizon school. It was a bath of modernity, because they were painting en plein air what they actually saw. He discovered however that aesthetic conventions were difficult to change even among the French landscape painters: coming from Switzerland, he would have liked to paint mountains, but in Paris this was considered an unsuitable or even indecent theme, because typical of mountain people. "Unfortunately in Paris everything that has to do with the mountains, everything about Switzerland is frowned upon. It is also a fashion factor. In Paris fashion is more important than faith, religion and the eternal laws of nature" [52]. Of French artists, and in particular Daubigny and Corot, however, he admired "the prettiest colour effects,... the sweet atmospheres" [53].

Fig. 44) Anselm Feuerbach, The storyteller at the source, 1866

After Koller, Anselm Feuerbach followed the new route through Flanders to reach Paris. He spent 1850 in Antwerp and then the two years from 1851 to 1853 in the French capital, where he learned at the studio of the history painter Thomas Couture. He wrote from Düsseldorf, in an undated letter definitely drafted when he was still adolescent: "Dear parents, I have decided to go to Paris by March" [54]. But evidently the dream did not come true right immediately, since in 1849 he wrote to his mother from Munich, a city that he really did not like: "If only I could go to Paris, I would study at the Louvre with the highest intensity, until I would be able to paint alone my paintings in a studio" [55].

Fig. 45) Wilhelm Leibl, Waiting, 1898

As the century progresses, Paris became the symbol of modernity in art, just as Rome was the symbol of antiquity. Hans van Marees travelled from Rome across Europe together with Konrad Fiedler and wrote in July 1869 to the sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand, who had remained in Rome. "We have finished admiring the things to visit in Paris. They are not many, with the exception of the Louvre. The most interesting thing was to see for once the works of modern French artists side by side. If the isolated pieces are really commendable, I have not yet found any work that documents an absolute mastery and therefore nothing that can serve as a model" [56]. In the same year, Wilhelm Leibl wrote from Paris to his parents, full of pride: "I won a medal, and everyone congratulated me. Everyone wants me to stay in Paris" [57]. And ten years later, in 1878, he wrote to his mother from Munich that his paintings continued meeting success in Paris, where (non-secondary aspect) they were encountering a buoyant market demand [58].

Fig. 46) Karl Stauffer-Bern, Lying Nude Man, 1879

The Swiss painter Karl Stauffer-Bern lived in Munich, Berlin and Italy, but in a letter of 1882, sent from Berlin to the painter Peter Halm, he referred to a recent trip to Paris, which he still described once again as the capital of contemporary art. What was the difference between Germany and France in terms of wealth of art and architecture? "In short, the difference is this: France is not, in general, richer in valuable paintings; on the contrary, I think that in Germany there are at least two or three times more good paintings than there are in France. In fact, the Louvre cannot match the Dresden and Munich galleries put together, not to mention if you add those in Berlin, Kassel, Frankfurt and so on. I believe that there is no doubt about it. The same applies to the most modern works: think of the Nationalgalerie [in Berlin], the Neue Pinakothek [in Munich] and the Count Schack Gallery [in Munich]. There is something good also in the new department of the Dresden Gallery. All this is more than enough to match the Palais du Luxembourg [in Paris]. The only one thing we lack are the new halls of the Louvre, Delacroix, etc..." [59]

Fig. 47) Eugène Delacroix, Apollo killing the python, 1850

Stauffer-Bern was making reference to the resettlement of the Apollon gallery in the Louvre, with new rooms opened in 1851, and in particular with the frescoed ceilings by Delacroix. "We have nothing from this period and since then we have remained behind. In Germany we do not have a tradition, a school, but only several academies, all very presumptuous: art cities that tear their hair each other and cannot do anything good together. A real mess. The only place where it was possible to do something is Munich. (...) What we lack in Germany is a city like Paris, a city where the competition is so fierce, that he who is merely in line with the average or even mediocre disappears on its own. (...) The [French painter] studies in the capital of the world (Victor Hugo) and the German one in a provincial town. (...) The resulting consequence is automatic: the French invest less but are able to deliver a well-made school work, which in many cases cannot be denied correctness, and even the least gifted produces things with which our painters are compared only at a later stage, after they have past the academy. The French learn more because they have a nearly complete panorama of the whole of contemporary art, which the Germans lack" [60]. And for the first time in the anthology, here are cited the Impressionists: "The majority of the French appear to give the greatest importance (and see this as the central issue) to this: if the topic of the painting is placed outdoors, even the picture needs to be painted outdoors, which is absolutely right. Thus, even before reaching the spiritual perfection of form, it is important to learn the right use of colours. In this the French are ahead of us ten miles. None of the Germans, even [Franz von] Lenbach, has ever been able to paint with such realism (not so much in the details, but as regards the overall effect) than do the French youth, the Impressionists, [Ernest Ange] Duez, etc." [61].  And he concluded with an enthusiast praise of Coubert.

Fig. 48) Carl Schuch, At the Seddiner Lake, 1880

In 1882 even the Austrian painter Carl Schuch, exponent of the naturalist school, was located in Paris. His letters revealed a great admiration for the French realists: "Courbet and Daubigny are men capable of anything" [62]. "Daubigny seems always more and more impressive: I saw many of his sketches, most drawn from nature" [63]. He added a high praise for Millet’s drawings: "I realized once again that what true art is, and not surprisingly Millet is the highest paid teacher today. It is such a realistic concept, as there ever has ever been" [64].

The completion of the cathedral of Cologne

One of founding myths of the German art in the nineteenth century was the completion of the cathedral of Cologne. The idea of restoring what was in effect still a ruin, and of terminating the construction (which had begun in 1250 but was stopped towards the end of 1400, and therefore since more than four hundred years) had emerged in the years when the city was annexed to France by Napoleon, and at a time when the Gothic style was still viewed with great suspicion. The decision to proceed in that direction was taken in 1814, after the victory over the French. It was a task that would be completed only in 1880.

Fig. 49) Collections of prints depicting the Cathedral of Cologne in 1824, 1851, 1854 and 1860.
Source: Andreas Kuppertz, The Cologne Cathedral, 1917
http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/kunst_dem_volke1917/0090?sid=6c4f6ca8739d5e9d7e53ecf5175c0c4f

In the anthology edited by Else Cassirer, the first reference to the theme is by the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel [65] (1781-1841), one of the promoters of the urban renewal in the nineteenth century Prussian Berlin. With him, the neo-classical architecture - of which he also produced a few examples - evolved in the next phase of architectural historicism, both Neo-Gothic as well as Neo-Renaissance. In those years, he also conceived the project, never realized, of another neo-Gothic cathedral in Berlin: the Cathedral of Liberation (Befreiungsdom), which was also thought to celebrate the end of the Napoleonic wars.

Fig. 50) Friedrich Schinkel, The Liberation Cathedral in Berlin (never implemented), Project of the nave, 1814-1815

Fig. 51) Friedrich Schinkel, The Liberation Cathedral in Berlin (never implemented), the exterior design, 1814-1815

Schinkel addressed Sulpis Boisserée (1783-1854), a little known personality today, who has been however crucial in the German culture: in addition to being the indefatigable promoter of the completion of the cathedral in Cologne [66], with the donation of his collection he created the basis for the Alte Pinakotheke in Munich. From an early age, he was one of the promoters of a new German art [67].

The first letter from Schinkel to Boisserée was dated September 3, 1816. Even before the beginning of any new construction activity, Schinkel focused in the letter on the need to stop the decay of the existing architectural structures and medieval decorations, a decay due to water infiltrations that had to be controlled and blocked. A second letter was dated August 8, 1829: he recommended not to reuse those parts of the old cathedral that were no longer stable and could no longer hold the building, and proposed to concentrate the available financial instruments (arising from an ad-hoc tax, called "the cathedral tax", i.e. Kathedralsteuer) not to decorate the exterior, but to complete as soon as possible the erection of the vaults in the naves, so as to secure the entire building [68]. 

Fig. 52) Johann Friedrich Overbeck, The Assumption of Mary, in 1857, Cologne Cathedral

Years passed, and the construction of the cathedral made progress, to the point that it was no longer at the centre of the interest of architects only, but also of painters. In 1835 Johann Friedrich Overbeck addressed again Sulpiz Boisserée to discuss the execution of the main altarpiece (with a crucifixion) that was commissioned by the Kunstverein (Art Association) in Düsseldorf. His first impression – he wrote in the January of that year - was that the interior of the cathedral was very dark and primarily designed to emphasize the stained glasses of the windows. There was in his opinion no sufficient light for altarpieces. He explained that he had discussed the issue with Cornelius, who encouraged him to use a gold background to solve the problem of the lack of light, but he had doubts on the idea: he did not believe that a golden background was fitting well with the theme of the crucifixion. It thus addressed Boisserée to seek advice and instructions on the size and shape of the picture [69]. The latter responded by making a counterproposal: it would be better to prepare a large altarpiece for the chapel of the Madonna, in the transept, and explained that the residents of Cologne would be thrilled to be able to celebrate a mass there, in a more intimate environment, dedicated to the Virgin. The painter thanked Boisserée in a second letter of May 1835, and announced that he would write to the Archbishop to announce the new agreement. It would be the way followed by Overbeck twenty years later, when he finished the great altarpiece of the Assumption of Mary in 1857.

Fig. 53) Edward Jakob von Steinle, The archangels Gabriel and Michael, 1843-1845, Cologne Cathedral

In 1842 Cornelius helped the Austrian Eduard Jacob von Steinle (1810-1886) to obtain the task of painting nine angels in the cathedral choir. They are frescoes on a mosaic background. In terms of style, the preferences by von Steinle, who was one of the last artists associated with the Nazarenes in Rome before returning to Germany to take the first professor position at the Art Institute of the Städel in Frankfurt, were clear: "With the exception of the cathedral, of my work and very few people, I am sick of the inhabitants of Cologne, with their artistic modernity in the sense of the French and Belgians" [70]. The painter wrote several times in the summer of 1844 to August Reichensperger (a Rhenish politician with Catholic orientation, who had taken over the responsibility of the reconstruction of the cathedral after Boisserée) to describe the angels. From the tone of the letters, the painter and the politician were clearly friends and aligned in terms of taste, in defence of an ecclesial art oriented to the medieval past. Von Steinle was however feeling isolated. 

Fig. 54) David Levy Elkann, Cover page of the Album of artists from Düsseldorf, 1864

In December 1845 he added that the only counterparty in Cologne whom he was able to still exchange ideas was "the Jew [David] Levy Elkan", an engraver and miniaturist with a clear neo-medieval taste. The last mention of the cathedral of Cologne in the anthology shows, however, that the artistic project of the cathedral of Cologne - although testifying the existence of a religious art stream in the mid-nineteenth century German art - was no longer necessarily the tip of diamond of contemporary art in Germany. Too much water had passed under the bridge since the project was launched in 1814 and other projects had become the new benchmarks for the development of taste.

End of Part Two
Go to Part Three

NOTES

[29] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, Berlin, Bruno Cassirer, 1919, 712 pages. Quotation at page 22.

[30] Cassirer Else, Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, Berlino, Bruno Cassirer, 1919, 669 pages.

[31] Cassirer Else, Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, Berlino, Bruno Cassirer, 1923, 669 pages.

[32] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 141.

[33] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, pp. 141-142.

[34] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 124.

[35] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 158.

[36] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 145.

[37] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 128.

[38] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 129.

[39] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, pp. 134-135.

[40] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 157.

[41] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, pp. 157-158.

[42] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 157.

[43] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 154.

[44] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 163.

[45] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 183.

[46] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 189.

[47] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 276.

[48] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 278.

[49] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 209.

[50] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 213.

[51] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, pp. 293-294.

[52] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 304.

[53] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 304.

[54] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 308.

[55] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 310.

[56] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 327.

[57] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 387.

[58] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, pp. 389-390.

[59] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 336.

[60] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, pp. 336-337.

[61] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, pp. 337-339.

[62] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 426.

[63] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 428.

[64] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 429.

[65] A wide collection of writings by Schinkel (Briefe, Tagebücher, Gedanken) was compiled and published in 1922. See: https://archive.org/stream/briefetagebche00schi#page/2/mode/2up

[66] See: Sulpiz Boisserée und die Vollendung des Kölner Doms. By Renate Matthaei. http://www.koesel-koeln.de/artikel_1190.ahtml

[67] Cornelius speaks of Sulpiz Boisserée still at a young age, as a "man of great culture and great love for everything is art". The letter is not dated, but on the basis of its content must go back to 1802. 

[68] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, pp. 92-93.

[69] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, pp. 126-127.

[70] Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert, (quoted), 1919, p. 260.