Maltese family of painters of German descent. Giuseppe Hyzler (1793–1858) and his brother Vincenzo Hyzler (1813–49) were closely associated with the Nazarene artists, whose noble ideals they propagated with missionary zeal. Their art is explicitly anti-Baroque and stresses the importance of line and good uncluttered design. Giuseppe studied in Rome at the Accademia di S Luca but he was attracted to the circle of Friedrich Overbeck and became a member of the Nazarene community in the monastery of S Isidoro. A Self-portrait of this period (Valletta, N. Mus.) shows him wearing the habit of the Nazarenes. He returned to Malta in 1823 and opened an art school that was attended by many of the island’s most distinguished citizens. He became an authority on aesthetic matters and was consulted on all important artistic projects. He had an almost dictatorial influence on Maltese artists, and he gathered around him a group of competent but not very remarkable young painters who diffused his ideals and often carried out his many commissions under his supervision. He is best known for the altarpiece of St Ignatius of Loyola with the Virgin of Manresa (Gozo, Jesuit Retreat House). Vincenzo was entrusted by Overbeck with the painting of an altarpiece of the Crucifixion that had been commissioned for a church in Stresa by Padre Antonio Rosmini, the Catholic theologian and intellectual. His only major painting in Malta is the altarpiece of St Andrew (Zejtun, St Catherine), a work that sums up the aesthetic ideals of the Nazarenes.