VEIT, Philipp
German painter. He was the grandson of Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), the German Jewish philosopher, and the stepson, from 1804, of Friedrich von Schlegel (1772-1829), the poet and scholar. He studied (1808-11) at the Akademie in Dresden under Friedrich Matthäi (1777-1845) and Caspar David Friedrich. He showed talent in drawing but, on moving to Vienna in 1811, had difficulties with painting in oil, and turned to watercolour.
Through Schlegel, Veit came to know many of the leading Romantics in Vienna, such as the poet and novelist Joseph von Eichendorff. In 1813-14 Veit took part in the campaign against Napoleon and returned briefly to Berlin. In 1815 he completed a votive picture, the Virgin with Christ and St John, for the church of St James in Heiligenstadt, Vienna (in situ), inspired by the work of Pietro Perugino and Raphael.
In 1815 Veit left for Italy where he stayed until 1830. In Rome he joined the circle around Friedrich Overbeck and Peter Cornelius, becoming a leading Nazarene. With these artists he took part in providing fresco decorations (1816-17) for the Casa Bartholdy (now the Bibliotheca Hertziana): Veit painted the scene of Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife and a decorative lunette allegory, the Seven Years of Plenty (both now Berlin, Staatliche Museen). In 1818 Veit was commissioned to paint the fresco of the Triumph of Religion in the Museo Chiaramonti in the Vatican, one of a series of murals recording the services of Pope Pius VII to science and art. Veit also took part in the decoration of the Casino Massimo in Rome (1818-24), painting the ceiling of the Dante Room with the Heavens of the Blessed and the Empyrean (in situ). In these frescoes and in his Maria Immaculata in Trinita dei Monti (1829-30; in situ) Veit proved himself the finest colourist of the Nazarene artists. While in Rome, Veit also painted some excellent portraits, notably a Self-portrait (c. 1816; Mainz, Landesmuseum). He also produced a fine series of pencil drawings of his fellow German artists in Rome.
In Frankfurt, where his most important works are preserved at the Städel, he was active from 1830 to 1843 as director of the art collections and as professor of painting. From 1853 till his death in 1877 he held the post of director of the municipal gallery at Mainz. Like his fellow Nazarenes he was more draughtsman than painter, and though his sense of colour was stronger than that of Overbeck or Cornelius, his works are generally more of the nature of coloured cartoons than of paintings in the modern sense.
Veit’s principal work is the large fresco of The Introduction of Christianity into Germany by St Boniface, at the Städel. In the Frankfurt Cathedral is his Assumption, while the Alte Nationalgalerie of Berlin has his painting of The Two Marys at the Sepulchre. An example of his romantic work is Germania, a national personification of Germany, located in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum of Nuremberg.
