Peter Cornelius created the first Faust illustrations in Frankfurt am Main, where he lived from 1809 to 1811. Barely two years after the play’s publication, the painter – who was initially influenced by Classicism – drew seven of the twelve illustrations in the sequence using neo-Gothic forms. In 1815, he completed the series in Rome, where he had joined an artists’ group called the Brotherhood of St. Luke. Four years earlier, in 1811, Cornelius had arranged for Goethe to see the first six drawings. Goethe praised their “clever treatment” but warned against a one-sided focus on the “German artistic world of the 16th century”, which “can not be considered perfect”. The prints were a great success. They not only made Cornelius famous, but shaped the way people imagined the characters.