Philipp Veit

Philipp Veit was born in Berlin in 1793. His parents divorced, and Philipp first lived with his mother and her second husband, Friedrich Schlegel, in Jena, Paris and Cologne. He maintained contact with his father, however, and in 1806 moved to Berlin to live with him. In 1808 he began studying painting in Dresden under Friedrich Matthäi. In 1811 he moved to Vienna, and in 1813 fought in the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon. In 1815, already a successful painter, he travelled to Rome, where he made a name for himself within the group of the Lukasbruderschaft (Brotherhood of St Luke). Because of his association with the Nazarenes, he was asked to become the director of the Städelsches Kunstinstitut. He accepted and moved to Frankfurt. In 1843 he resigned that office in order to be able to again work as an artist, and moved into an atelier in the headquarters of the Deutschordenshaus, the Commandry of the Teutonic Knights, in Sachsenhausen. In 1853 Veit moved to Mainz and became the director of the city’s painting collection, the Gemäldegalerie. He died in Mainz in 1877.