Schnorr was born in Leipzig, the son of Veit Hanns Schnorr von Carolsfeld[2] (1764–1841), a draughtsman, engraver and painter, from whom he received his initial artistic education,[2] his earliest known works being copies of the Neoclassical drawings of John Flaxman.[4] In 1811 he entered the Vienna Academy, from which Johann Friedrich Overbeck and others who rebelled against the old conventional style had been expelled about a year before.[3] There he studied under Friedrich Heinrich Füger, and became friends with Joseph Anton Koch and Heinrich Olivier, both of whom would have an important influence on his style.[2] Schnorr followed Overbeck and the other founders of the Nazarene movement to Rome in 1815. This school of religious and romantic art tended to reject modern styles, attempting to revert to and revive the principles and practice of earlier periods.[3]