Veit, PHILIPP

Veit, PHILIPP, painter, was born at Berlin, February 13, 1793. His mother, a daughter of Moses Mendelsohn, had for her second husband Friedrich Schlegel, and Veit became devotedly attached to the religious and artistic ideas of his stepfather, like whom he embraced Catholicism. After finishing his studies at Dresden, he proceeded to Rome in 1815, and became a prominent member of that band of young German painters who sought to infuse into modern art the purity and earnestness of mediæval times. Of all the associates Veit ventured furthest into the obscure realms of symbolism and allegory. His first famous work was the 'Seven Years of Plenty,' executed as a companion-piece to Overbeck's 'Seven Years of Dearth,' and forming part of a series of frescoes illustrative of the history of Joseph, painted at the Villa Bartholdy in Rome. Other pictures of his Roman period are 'The Triumph of Religion' (Vatican), 'Scenes from Dante's Paradiso' (Massimi Villa), and an altarpiece, representing 'Mary Queen of Heaven,' in the Trinità de' Monti. These procured him so great a reputation that he was called in 1830 to the directorship of the Art Institute in Frankfort-on-the-Main. While holding this position he produced many grand pictures, of which the most celebrated is the large fresco (at the Institute) representing 'Christianity bringing the Fine Arts to Germany.' In 1843 he removed to Sachsenhausen in Hesse-Cassel, in 1853 to Mainz. He died December 18, 1877.