The fresco decorations of the Ludwigskirche, which were for the most part designed and executed by Cornelius, are perhaps the most important mural works of modern times. The large fresco of the Last Judgment, over the high altar in that church, measures 62 ft. in height by 38 ft. in width. The frescoes of the Creator, the Nativity, and the Crucifixion in the same building are also upon a large scale. Amongst his other great works in Munich may be included his decorations in the Pinakothek and in the Glyptothek; those in the latter building, in the hall of the gods and the hall of the hero-myths, are perhaps the best known. About the year 1839-1840 he left Munich for Berlin to proceed with that series of cartoons, from the Apocalypse, for the frescoes for which he had been commissioned by Frederick William IV., and which were intended to decorate the Campo Santo or royal mausoleum. These were his final works.
Cornelius, as an oil painter, possessed but little technical skill, nor do his works exhibit any instinctive appreciation of colour. Even as a fresco painter his manipulative power was not great. And in critically examining the execution in colour of some of his magnificent designs, one cannot help feeling that he was, in this respect, unable to do them full justice. Cornelius and his associates endeavoured to follow in their works the spirit of the Italian painters. But the Italian strain is to a considerable extent modified by the Dürer heritage. This Dürer influence is manifest in a tendency to overcrowding in composition, in a degree of attenuation in the proportions of, and a poverty of contour in, the nude figure, and also in a leaning to the selection of Gothic forms for draperies. These peculiarities are even noticeable in Cornelius's principal work of the "Last Judgment," in the Ludwigskirche in Munich. The attenuation and want of flexibility of contour in the nude are perhaps most conspicuous in his frescoes of classical subjects in the Glyptothek, especially in that representing the contention for the body of Patroclus. But notwithstanding these peculiarities there is always in his works a grandeur and nobleness of conception, as all must acknowledge who have inspected his designs for the Ludwigskirche, for the Campo Santo, &c. If he were not dexterous in the handling of the brush, he could conceive and design a subject with masterly purpose. If he had an imperfect eye for colour, in the Venetian, the Flemish, or the English sense, he had vast mental foresight in directing the German school of painting; and his favourite motto of _Deutschland über alles_ indicates the direction and the strength of his patriotism. Karl Hermann was one of Cornelius's earliest and most esteemed scholars, a man of simple and fervent nature, painstaking to the utmost, a very type of the finest German student nature; Kaulbach and Adam Eberle were also amongst his scholars. Every public edifice in Munich and other German cities which were embellished with frescoes, became, as in Italy, a school of art of the very best kind; for the decoration of a public building begets a practical knowledge of design. The development of this institution of scholarship in Munich was a work of time. The cartoons for the Glyptothek were all by Cornelius's own hand. In the Pinakothek his sketches and small drawings sufficed; but in the Ludwigskirche the invention even of some of the subjects was entrusted to his scholar Hermann.