19th Century

Templates for the state's healthcare of the Hungarian inhabitants were progressively created up until the Age of Enlightenment. One of the most important tasks of the state and public health authorities was to protect the inhabitants from contagious diseases. Educating people from every strata of the population to look after their health was also considered extremely important.

In historiography, there are exceedingly contradictory evaluations of the "long 19th century" with regard to the development of religiosity, the relationship between the state and the churches as well as mutual relations between individual religious communities. Was it the most ecclesiastical century or did the French Revolution began an unstoppable process of retreat of religion from the "theatre" of history? Can we agree with the opinion that the 19th century brought about the onset of the second confessionalisation in Europe?

The purpose of this overview is to examine the reception of the Nazarene movement in France by first recalling how art criticism interpreted the works and theories of Nazarene painters. Then by addressing the question of the existence of a French Nazarene movement, which is currently being debated in modern historiography. And finally by looking at how Nazarene compositions, engravings in particular, had a direct influence on the production of religious paintings, stained glass and other illustrated works of devotion throughout the 19th century.

The study is focused on the unknown artworks of Nazarenes preserved in Slovakia. It follows the ways by which came here the paintings, drawings and graphics by Johann Friedrich Overbeck and artists around him. Those were Johann Evangelist Scheffer von Leonhardshoff, Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Carl von Blaas and Ferenc Szoldatics (Kupelwieser's and Führich's student). From Slovakia joined the Nazarenes the sculptor and draftsman Joseph Daniel Böhm from Spišské Vlachy; however his interests were wider.

The art of the early 19th century and especially the question of its directions after the year 1800 has repeatedly been the subject of attention of art historians in recent decades. The conventional image of the 19th century as a century of varying historicist styles, insisting on academic rules, sentimental and/or heroic religious and historic imagery and bourgeois taste seems to have more to it than just being a prelude to the modernism that emerged.