Johann Friedrich Overbeck

In 1810 a small band of German art students left the Vienna academy in disgust and moved into an abandoned monastery in Rome. They grew their hair long, wore cloaks, and set out to bring back the pure religious painting of the age before Raphael. Their leader was Johann Friedrich Overbeck, and Romans nicknamed the group the Nazarenes for their biblical looks.

Overbeck took the mission furthest. He converted to Catholicism in 1813, stayed in Rome for the rest of his life, and devoted almost 60 years to devotional pictures modeled on early Italian and German masters. With a few friends he painted a set of frescoes in the house of the Prussian consul, the Casa Bartholdy, that helped revive fresco as a serious medium. His art can look deliberately stiff to modern eyes, because he wanted the sincerity of the 15th century over the polish of his own. He was still taking religious commissions when he died in Rome in 1869.