Painter. He was a 19th century German Romantic painter and one of the main exponents of the Nazarene Movement in Rome. This conservative movement was for authors, painters as well as lovers of the arts. He is credited of having been the first to revive the nearly forgotten technique of Fresco painting. His ceiling Fresco paintings can be found in Italy as well as Germany. Born into a Prussian Jewish family, his grandfather was Moses Mendelssohn, a well-known German-Jewish philosopher and theologian. After his parents' divorce when he was young, he gained the advantage of living with his mother, Dorothea Mendelssohn, and stepfather in Paris and his father in Germany. He was exposed to various forms of art as well as numerous historical events. He studied at the Royal Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. Uncomfortable with the medium of painting with oils, he mainly painted in watercolors or made drawings. In 1810 he, his mother, and older brother, Jonas, converted to Roman Catholic, which against his parents' divorce agreement. This conversion impacted his paintings. In 1815, he finished the first religious painting "Virgin with Christ and St John", a votive painting for the church of Saint James in Heiligenstadt in Vienna. A German patriot, he fought against Napoleon. The Napoleonic Wars impacted his career as did later wars in Germany, causing some of his works to be lost. For the Vatican, he painted in 1818 "The Triumph of Religion," showing a female figure holding a cross and sitting among the Roman ruins, with the tools used to torment Christian martyrs resting at her feet. In 1821, Veit took a 13-year-old bride and the couple had five children. He lived in Rome for a time before relocating to Frankfurt in October of 1830 with his family and widowed mother. From 1830 to 1843, he was director of collections and taught at Städel Institute of Art, with one of his many pupils being Karl Ballenberger. His 1835 painting, "Germania," is a portrait of the nation of Germany as a female. Since then, other artists have covered his idea of this painting. As he aged, his conservative ideals took a stance against more modern, liberal artists. From 1853 till his death in 1877 he held the post of director of the municipal gallery in Mainz. In his eight-decade life, he saw many historical changes, which impacted his pious works.