“What pleases us about the older paintings is above all their pious simplicity... However, we do not want to become simple as many have done, but rather become pious and imitate their virtues.”

— Caspar David Friedrich

Quote of Friedrich, in C. D. Eberlein, C. D. Friedrich Bekenntnisse, pp. 72-73; as cited by Linda Siegel in Caspar David Friedrich and the Age of German Romanticism, Boston Branden Press Publishers, 1978, p. 36
it is possible that Friedrich refers critically in the second part of his remark to the Nazarenes
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Caspar David Friedrich 31

Swedish painter 1774–1840

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