V.A. Zhukovskys correspondence and the German Nazarenes(publication and commentary)

V.A. Zhukovsky, a representative of Russian romanticism, is widely known as a poet and statesmanwho to a considerable degree determined the cultural transfer between Russia and WesternEurope in the first half of the 19th century. The pictorial heritage of V. A. Zhukovsky and his creativecontacts with artists still remain the object of research. This article surveys the creative contacts of thepoet with the Nazarenes, the artistic union of German and Austrian romanticists founded in 1809. Theartistic postulates of this movement definitely appealed to his worldview: profound religious sense,self-perfectionism, conservatism and comprehensive universalism embodied in concrete and tangibleimages. His pedagogical principles evidently appealed to the profound idea of the morally didactic andeducational role of painting.The article surveys three letters in French (dated October 29, 1849, January 5 and 24, 1851)Zhukovsky addressed to E.J. von Steinle, the latest Nazarene, and one letter in German to Zhukovskyby F. Overbeck, the Nazarenes head (dated November 12, 1839). The author of the article discoveredthese letters in the archives in Germany; they have never been translated, published or commentedupon before.The last letter uncovers the circumstances of the canvas The Triumph of Religion in the Arts,1831-1840 (F. Overbeck, Stadel Institute of Arts, Frankfurt am Main), being transferred into the ownershipof the Russian imperial collection owing to V.A. Zhukovsky. The afore-mentioned canvas revealsF. Overbecks creative credo and the very artistic manifesto of the Nazarenes.The correspondence of V.A. Zhukovsky with E.J. von Steinle is evidence of the new facts aboutthe evolution of the poet during the last years of his life abroad. It also specifies his relations withfriends in Germany and testifies to the fact that highly educated German intelligentsia represented byromanticists, whose ideas and achievements Zhukovsky transferred to Russian readers during the firstperiod of his development, shared the identical worldview.

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