one solo and choir.

CORNELIUS, PETER VON (1784-1867), German painter, was born in Dusseldorf
in 1784. His father, who was inspector of the Dusseldorf gallery, died
in 1799, and the young Cornelius was stimulated to extraordinary
exertions. In a letter to the Count Raczynski he says, "It fell to the
lot of an elder brother and myself to watch over the interests of a
numerous family. It was at this time that it was attempted to persuade
my mother that it would be better for me to devote myself to the trade
of a goldsmith than to continue to pursue painting--in the first place,
in consequence of the time necessary to qualify me for the art, and in
the next, because there were already so many painters. My dear mother,
however, rejected all this advice, and I felt myself impelled onward by
an uncontrollable enthusiasm, to which the confidence of my mother gave
new strength, which was supported by the continual fear that I should be
removed from the study of that art I loved so much." His earliest work
of importance was the decoration of the choir of the church of St
Quirinus at Neuss. At the age of twenty-six he produced his designs from
_Faust_. On October 14, 1811, he arrived in Rome, where he soon became
one of the most promising of that brotherhood of young German painters
which included Overbeck, Schadow, Veit, Schnorr and Ludwig Vogel
(1788-1879),--a fraternity (some of whom selected a ruinous convent for
their home) who were banded together for resolute study and mutual
criticism. Out of this association came the men who, though they were
ridiculed at the time, were destined to found a new German school of
art.

At Rome Cornelius participated, with other members of his fraternity, in
the decoration of the Casa Bartoldi and the Villa Massimi, and while
thus employed he was also engaged upon designs for the illustration of
the Nibelungenlied. From Rome he was called to Dusseldorf to remodel the
Academy, and to Munich by the then crown-prince of Bavaria, afterwards
Louis I., to direct the decorations for the Glyptothek. Cornelius,
however, soon found that attention to such widely separated duties was
incompatible with the just performance of either, and most inconvenient
to himself; eventually, therefore, he resigned his post at Dusseldorf to
throw himself completely and thoroughly into those works for which he
had been commissioned by the crown-prince. He therefore left Dusseldorf
for Munich, where he was joined