Classicism and Biedermeier
Under Joseph II and the Napoleonic Wars Classicism came to Vienna. After the Congress of Vienna the middle classes withdrew into the home, and painters such as Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller and Friedrich von Amerling portrayed it in clear light.
Emperor Joseph II, who ruled alone from 1780 to 1790, wanted to renew the state in the spirit of the Enlightenment. He closed hundreds of monasteries that were not devoted to teaching or nursing and sold their art. Architecture became simpler and classical, and the academy in Vienna under Heinrich Friedrich Füger taught a painting based on ancient models. Antonio Canova made the tomb monument of Archduchess Maria Christina in the Augustinian Church.
After the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815 came a long period of peace, but also of censorship and police surveillance under Chancellor Metternich. The middle classes turned their interest to the family, the home, music and nature. This period and its style are called Biedermeier, after a satirical figure invented later. Furniture, porcelain and glass took simple, light and practical forms.
Painting became intimate and exact. Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller painted portraits, peasant scenes and Alpine landscapes in sharp sunlight, Friedrich von Amerling elegant portraits of Vienna’s upper class and Josef Danhauser genre pictures and moments in the drawing room. Rudolf von Alt depicted the city and the countryside in watercolour for almost the whole of the 19th century. In Vienna young artists formed the Brotherhood of St Luke in 1809, which moved to Rome and became known as the Nazarenes.