Philipp Veit

Philipp Veit (13 February 1793 – 18 December 1877) was a German Romantic painter and one of the main exponents of the Nazarene movement. It is to Veit that the credit of having been the first to revive the nearly forgotten technique of fresco painting is due.

Veit was born in Berlin, Prussia. He was the son of a banker, Simon Veit and his wife Brendel, daughter of Moses Mendelssohn. After Veit's parents divorced in 1799, Veit initially stayed with his mother and lived with her and her new husband Friedrich Schlegel in Jena, Paris, and Cologne. In 1806, he returned to his father in Berlin and finished his schooling in the "Graues Kloster".

From 1808 on, Veit received his first art education at the Royal Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where he was taught by Friedrich Matthäi and Caspar David Friedrich, later in Vienna. Although a prodigious talent when it came to drawing, Veit was not comfortable with oil painting, for which reason in Vienna he took to the medium of watercolour. In Vienna, he made the acquaintance of Schlegel, and through him came to know several Viennese Romantics, one of whom was the poet and novelist Joseph von Eichendorff.