Resumen de Historicism and the Symbolic Imagination in Nazarene Art
Peter Cornelius's monumental 1840 fresco cycle in Munich's church of St. Ludwig summed up the German Nazarenes' endeavor to construct a modern religious painting: while rooted in emulation, its aesthetic strategies engaged Romantic theory, post-Kantian philosophy, and theology. This engagement produced a highly conceptual attitude to art, which found expression in Cornelius's notion of “historical symbolism.” The symbolic impulse fostered a style characterized by fragmentation, idealized abstraction, and suspension of narrative, whereas the desire to revive sacred history led to a type of visual piety in which the act of seeing brought about belief through philosophical reflection, not immediate experience.
