Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane

Johann Friedrich Overbeck (3 July 1789 – 12 November 1869) was a German painter and a founder of the Nazarene art movement.

Overbeck was born in Lübeck in 1789. His family had been Protestant pastors for three generations; his father Christian Adolph Overbeck (1755–1821) was doctor of law, poet, mystic pietist and burgomaster of Lübeck. Near the family mansion in the Konigstrasse stood the Gymnasium, where his uncle, a doctor of theology and a voluminous writer, was the master; there Johann became a classic scholar and received instruction in art.

Overbeck left Lübeck in March 1806, and studied at the academy of Vienna, then under the direction of Heinrich Friedrich Füger. While he gained some of the polished technical aspects of the neoclassic painters, he was alienated by lack of religious spirituality in the themes chosen by his masters. He wrote to a friend that he had fallen among a vulgar set, that every noble thought was suppressed within the academy and that losing all faith in humanity, he had turned inward to his faith for inspiration.