Following the example of Johann Friedrich Overbeck and others, Schadow, originally a Lutheran, joined the Roman Catholic Church, and held that an artist must believe and live out the truths he essays to paint.

[3] As an author, he is best known for his lecture, Ueber den Einfluss des Christentums auf die bildende Kunst (About The Influence of Christianity On The Visual Arts) (Düsseldorf, 1843), and the biographical sketches, Der moderne Vasari (Berlin, 1854).

In 1826 he was made director of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf which he reoriented towards the production of Christian art, though he began a major dispute with one of its professors, Heinrich Christoph Kolbe, ending in the latter leaving the Academy in 1832.

[citation needed] In 1837, Schadow selected, at request, those of his students best qualified to decorate the chapel of St Apollinaris on the Rhine with frescoes.

In Düsseldorf a reaction set in against the spiritual and sacerdotal style he had established and, in 1859, the party of naturalism, after a severe struggle, drove Director Schadow from his chair.