Purismo was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 cultural movement which began in the 1820s. The group intended to restore and preserve language through the study of medieval authors, and such study extended to the visual arts.

Inspired by the Nazarenes

Nazarene movement

The name Nazarene was adopted by a group of early 19th century German Romantic painters who aimed to revive honesty and spirituality in Christian art...

 from Germany, the artists of Purismo reject Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...

 and emulated the works of Raphael

Raphael

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...

, Giotto

Giotto di Bondone

Giotto di Bondone , better known simply as Giotto, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence in the late Middle Ages...

 and Fra Angelico

Fra Angelico

Fra Angelico , born Guido di Pietro, was an Early Italian Renaissance painter described by Vasari in his Lives of the Artists as having "a rare and perfect talent"...

.

The group's ideals were iterated in their manifesto Del purismo nelle arti, in 1842–43 which was written by Antonio Bianchini and co-signed by Tommaso Minardi (1787–1871), the major proponent of Purismo, Nazarene co-founder Friedrich Overbeck

Johann Friedrich Overbeck

Johann Friedrich Overbeck , was a German painter and member of the Nazarene movement. He also made four etchings.-Biography:...

 and Pietro Tenerani

Pietro Tenerani

Pietro Tenerani was an Italian sculptor who studied in the studios of both Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen and carried a chaste neoclassical style into the mid-nineteenth century, specialising in pious subjects. His most prominent commission was for the tomb of Pope Pius VIII in Rome....

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The movement flourished through 1860, and reflected the taste for revivalist styles, which in Italy was fed growing interest in Italian national identity and artistic heritage.