After Friedrich Schlegel, in his periodical, Europa, had drawn attention to the wealth of old German paintings, the brothers Boisserée began to collect the scattered treasures, travelling up and down the Rhine and throughout the Netherlands to track out the long-despised works. By 1805 a collection of Flemish and German masters had been made, which exercised great influence on the history of art. The revival of enthusiasm for early German art led to predilection for the pre-Raphaelite Italian painters. All honour to the pre-Raphaelites! From Fiesole and Giotto to Masaccio, Botticelli, Ghirlandajo, Luca Signorelli, Perugino, and Pinturicchio, all Europe pays them the homage that is their due. But Friedrich Schlegel, in his article in _Europa_ on Raphael, exalts the pre-Raphaelite at the expense of the succeeding period. He says: "With this newer school, typified by such names as Raphael, Correggio, Giulio Romano, and Michael Angelo, begins the decay of art." And this is considered to be so patent a fact that Schlegel does not think it necessary to offer any justification of his assertion; nay, two pages later he actually confesses that he has not seen any of Michael Angelo's works. Here we have the perfection of Romantic insolence. This paragon of an art critic, who, in order the better to exalt the old monkish pictures, dates the decay of art from Raphael, Correggio, Titian, and Michael Angelo, admits without the slightest feeling of shame that he has not seen so much as one of the works of the greatest of these men. Despising such a paltry thing as knowledge, he judges him with his inner consciousness. But it is unnecessary to anticipate; for in _Sternbald_ itself monkish piety, with all its languishing fanaticism, has already come to life again in an unctuousness without parallel. This it was which so irritated Goethe. The idea that piety lies at the foundation of all true art, a theory which was speedily adopted by the whole school of neo-German "Nazarenic" painters, he constantly jeered at. An expression he often used in speaking of the "Nazarenes" was, that they Sternbaldised (_sternbaldisierten_).