ternbald, a pupil of Albrecht Duerer, makes a roving journey to the
Low Countries, the Rhine, and Italy, in order to deepen his artistic
nature. The psychology of the novel is by no means always true to the
spirit of the sixteenth century; in fact a good part of the story
reflects aristocratic French chateau-life in the eighteenth century.
The intensities of romantic friendship give a sustained thrill, and
the style is rhythmic, though the action is continually interrupted by
episodes, lyrics, and discourses. In the unworldliness, the delicacy
of sensibility, and the somewhat vague outlines of the story one may
be reminded, at times, of _The Marble Faun_. Its defense of German
Art, as compared with that of the Italian Renaissance, is its chief
message.

This novel has been dwelt upon because of its direct influence upon
German painting and religion. A new verb, "_sternbaldisieren_," was
coined to parody a new movement in German art toward the medieval,
religious spirit. It is this book which Heine had in mind when he
ridiculed Tieck's "silly plunge into medieval naivete." Overbeck and
Cornelius in Rome, with their pre-Raphaelite, old-German and
catholicizing tendencies, became the leaders of a productive school.
Goethe scourged it for its "mystic-religious" aspirations, and
demanded a more vigorous, cheerful and progressive outlook for German
painting.

Having already formed a personal acquaintance with Friedrich Schlegel
in Berlin, Tieck moved to Jena in 1799, came into very close relations
with Fichte, the Schlegels, and Novalis, and continued to produce
works in the spirit of the group, notably the tragedy _Life and Death
of Saint Genoveva_ (1800). His most splendid literary feat at this
period, however, was the translation of _Don Quixote_ (1799-1801), a
triumph over just those subtle difficulties which are well-nigh
insurmountable, a rendering which went far beyond any mere literalness
of text, and reproduced the very tone and aura of its original.

In 1803 he published a graceful little volume of typical
_Minnelieder_, renewed from the middle high-German period. The note of
the book (in which Runge's copperplate outlines are perhaps as
significant as the poems) is spiritualized sex-love: the utterance of
its fragrance and delicacy, its unique place in the universe as a
pathway to the Divine--a point of view to which the modern mind is
prone to take some exceptions, considering a religion of erotics
hardly firm