Background
Veit was born in Berlin, Prussia. He was the son of a banker Simon Veit and his wife Dorothea, daughter of Moses Mendelssohn, who subsequently left him to marry Friedrich Schlegel.
Veit was born in Berlin, Prussia. He was the son of a banker Simon Veit and his wife Dorothea, daughter of Moses Mendelssohn, who subsequently left him to marry Friedrich Schlegel.
To Veit is due the cr of having been the first to revive the almost forgotten technique of fresco painting. Veit received his first art education in Dresden, where he was taught by Caspar David Friedrich, and Vienna. Although a prodigious talent when it came to drawing, Veit was not comfortable with oil painting.
Therefore, in Vienna he took to working with watercolor. Veit participated in the struggle against Napoleon in 1813-14, returning to Berlin for a short period. In 1815, he finished the Virgin with Christ and St John, a votive painting for the church of St James in Heiligenstadt, Vienna.
The painting was inspired by the style of Pietro Perugino and Raphael. 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 in Mainz.
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. Veit died in Mainz.