The Immaculate Conception

This image of the Immaculate Conception, an oil on canvas painting 2.20 meters wide by 3.33 meters tall, was produced by German Romantic painter Philipp Veit in 1830, a Catholic man and one of the leading exponents of the Nazarene Movement of 19th-century Vienna, born in February 1793 he completed the Immaculate Conception at age 37. Philipp Veit died in 1877 at age 84.

Veit's collection of paintings, including the Immaculate Conception, is a testament to his exquisite representations of storytelling, color, and proportion. Elements that contribute to a distinguished consonance, true to Veit, that accurately revives spirituality in art, engaging viewers with the storytelling aspect of his pieces.

The Immaculate Conception belongs to the art collection of The Church of Santissima Trinità dei Monti, La Trinité-des-Monts. This Roman Catholic late Renaissance titular church is part of a monastery complex in Rome positioned above the Spanish Steps, leading to the Piazza di Spagna. It is renowned for its rich collection of religious art, including Veit's Immaculate Conception.

The fresco to the left is in Rome's Casino Massimo Lancelotti. It depicts Dante and Beatrice speaking to Piccarda and Constance of Sicily in Canto III of The Divine Comedy, painted by German painter Philipp Veit from 1817 to 1827.

What was the Nazarene Movement of 19th-century Vienna?

The Nazarene Movement, a German art society and brotherhood from 1809 to 1829, was dedicated to the return to the medieval spirit of art. This brotherhood of artists, including Philipp Veit, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Johann Friedrich Overbeck, Peter von Cornelius, and Spanish painter Manuel Vilar, reacted against the Neoclacism of the 18th century, holding on to the belief that art should serve a moral or religious purpose.

The movement, committed to their artistic principles, rejected the more modern modalities of up-and-rising European art academies and supported the more intimate classrooms of the medieval workshop, working and living together in semi-monastic company. These painters admired artists of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, believing that a lack of observation on religious narrative abandoned the most virtuous religious ideals to favor artistic virtuosity.

With its deeply felt Christian ideals, the Nazarene Movement created the first effective antiacademic movement in European painting. This authentic expression of their beliefs had a lasting impact, generating a positive gravitas on subsequent art movements, like the English Pre-Raphalites of the middle 19th century.