The French artists of the Barbizon School effectively colonized the small village of the same name in the mid-19th century; some 100 artists watched -- and painted -- every step taken by the few hundred peasants as they went about their daily tasks. However, an earlier group of German and Austrian artists had gone one step further: They lived the simple life for real.

In 1809, a few decades before the Barbizon painters discovered their particular corner of rustic paradise, a circle of German and Austrian painters moved to Rome and set up house in a disused monastery. Founded by J.F. Overbeck and Franz Pforr, the group called itself the Brotherhood of St. Luke, and lived a life of almost monastic simplicity, performing domestic tasks in the morning and devoting every afternoon to their art.

The quasi-religious lifestyle wasn't mere affectation. The Nazarenes, as members of the brotherhood were later labeled, aspired to "reform" art by returning to the models of earlier ages -- the religious art of the Italian renaissance (particularly Perugino and Raphael) and late medieval Germany (such as the woodcuts of Albrecht Durer). One of their number, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, nursed the dream of illustrating the entire Bible. This had been conceived of as a collective Nazarene project, but was eventually realized, over the course of 35 years, by Schnorr alone.