Background
Peter Joseph von Cornelius was born on September 27, 1783, in Dusseldorf.
Peter Joseph von Cornelius was born on September 27, 1783, in Dusseldorf.
In 1811 Cornelius went to Rome, where he joined a group of young German painters, the Nazarenes, or Lucas Brotherhood (Lukasbund), led by Franz Pforr and J. F. Overbeck. In 1819 Cornelius was invited to Munich by the Bavarian crown prince, later King Ludwig I, to decorate the new museum of Classical sculpture (Glyptothek). In 1824 he became director of the Munich Academy. His Last Judgment (1829–40), filling the whole east wall of the Ludwigskirche in Munich, is notable for its clarity and didactic purpose. In 1841 Frederick William IV called Cornelius to Berlin, where his main occupation was the planning of a vast cycle of frescoes (never executed) for the walls of a cemetery, modelled on the Campo Santo in Pisa.
At heart Cornelius was always an academic artist, even if his outlook was shaped by Romantic philosophy. But he remains a notable artist by virtue of his penetrating intellect, which gave substance to his large dogmatic pictures and order to their composition. He died in Berlin on May 6, 1867.
In 1832 got married to Carolina Grossi. He married Geltrude von Cornelius in 1835.