[Illustration: HILDEBRANDT. THE SONS OF EDWARD.] [Illustration: STEINBRUCK. ELVES.] Even the idyllic and touching scenes from the Old Testament and the Hebrew elegies are easily traced back to theatrical inspirations. With the exception of the frescoes of the Casa Bartholdy, the subjects of which were selected with an eye to the religious belief of their purchaser, the Nazarenes found all the subject-matter they wanted in the New Testament. The Passion of Our Lord was unable to inspire the Düsseldorf school. As compared to the few Christian paintings by W. Schadow, and the dreamy Madonnas of Deger, Ittenbach, and little Perugino Mintrop, we find a far greater number of scenes from the Old Testament, which at the time gave birth to numerous dramas. Hübner, always inclined to idyllic and melancholy scenes, painted Ruth and Boaz, his first great picture, which established his reputation. After Klingemann had utilised the whole life of Moses by turning it into a theatrically effective sequence, Christian Koehler scored a success with his "Moses hidden in the Bulrushes" and his "Finding of Moses," and then, incited by Raupach's "Semiramis," abandoned his biblical heroines for Oriental ones. Theodor Hildebrandt took Tieck's "Judith" as an inspiration for his picture of this Jewish heroine. Kehren's "Joseph reveals Himself to his Brethren" was begun after the opera _Joseph in Egypt_ had been performed at Düsseldorf. Bendemann, in 1832, played his trump card with his "Lament of the Jews," now in the Cologne Museum, after Byron had made his propaganda, suggested by the sad lives of the children of Israel, and Friedrich von Uechtritz had caused his drama, _The Babylonians in Jerusalem_, to be performed, ending as it does with the sending of the Jews into captivity in Babylon-- "Wein' über die die weinen fern in Babel, Ihr Tempel brach, ihr Land ward, ach! zur Fabel! Wein'! es erstart der heil 'gen Harfe Ton, Im Haus Jehovas haust der Spötter Hohn." And his oil-paintings of a later date, "Jeremiah on the Ruins of Jerusalem" (1834), now in the German Emperor's collection, and the "Sending of the Jews into Captivity in Babylon" (1872), in the Berlin National Gallery, were variations on the same theme.