Overbeck.
by J. Beavington Atkinson.
PREFACE.
In offering to the public the first complete biography yet attempted of the painter Overbeck, I wish to give a few words in explanation. The task has been far from easy: the materials, though the reverse of scanty, are scattered: reminiscences of the artist and criticisms on his works lie as fragments dispersed over the current literature of Germany.
My endeavour has been to fill in vacuities, to thread together a consistent and connected narrative, and thus, so far as I have been able, to present a true and lucid history.
My duty has been all the more anxious from the unusual complexity of the pictorial products falling under review. The scenes are laid amid the battle of the schools: the periods bring into prominence conflicts between cla.s.sic, romantic, and naturalistic styles. The art of Overbeck was rooted in the olden times, yet in some degree it became quickened by contact with present life, and took also a personal aspect from the painter"s inner self. The great pictures and the numberless drawings thus evolved over a s.p.a.ce of more than half a century, and here described from my own knowledge, raise interesting and intricate questions on which the world remains divided. My care has been to give a just estimate of these exceptional art manifestations.
Also enter into the art, through the life, conflicts of religious creeds, strifes between Protestantism and Catholicism, between Platonism, Mysticism, and Rationalism. In dealing with such delicate and serious topics I have avoided all controversy, and have ventured only on the simplest and briefest exposition. My effort has been to state the case fairly all round, to maintain an even balance, and, above all, to place the reader, whatever may chance to be his creed or art school, in a position to form a true judgment.
Likewise fairly to appreciate the artist, it is needful rightly to comprehend the man. And here, again, perplexities arise from unwonted combinations. The character is one of the n.o.blest and purest, and yet it is beset with peculiar infirmities. The portrait offered in these pages is, I trust, true and individual, toned down into unity, and yet not left cold or colourless. Such negation would, indeed, do injustice to my own feelings. For among the cherished recollections of past days are my visits to Overbeck"s studio, stretching over a period of twenty years: I learned to revere the master and to love his works, and I trust no word in this little volume may lessen the respect due to an honoured name.
J. B. A.
KENSINGTON, _May, 1882._
CHAPTER I.
LuBECK--VIENNA.
Johann Friedrich Overbeck was born, as a tablet on his father"s house records, in Lubeck on the 4th of July, 1789. Among his ancestors were Doctors of Law and Evangelical Pastors. His parents were good Protestants; his father was Burgomaster in the ancient city. Seldom has a life been so nicely preordained as that of the young religious painter. The light of his coming did not shine, as commonly supposed, out of surrounding darkness. A visit to his birth-place, expressly made for this memoir, soon showed me that Overbeck, from his youth upwards, had been tenderly cared for; that he received a cla.s.sic education; that his mind was brought under moral and religious discipline; in short, that the rich harvest of later years had found its seed-time here within the family home in Lubeck.
The old house in which Overbeck was born has unfortunately, within the last few years, been modernised, but the original medallion relief of the painter"s head, life-size, is built into the new facade, and the former structure can be accurately ascertained as well from the designs of the adjoining tenements as from the living testimony of the neighbours.[1] The Overbeck mansion stood in the Konig Stra.s.se, a princ.i.p.al thoroughfare in the heart of an old city which may not inaptly be designated the Nuremberg of Northern Germany. It is not difficult here on the spot to picture the life of the painter while yet in his teens. The historic town of Lubeck had enjoyed a signal political, commercial and artistic epoch. As the head of the Hanseatic League, it rose to unexampled prosperity. Deputies from eighty confederate munic.i.p.alities a.s.sembled in the audience-chamber of the Rathhaus; fortifications, walls and gateways were reared for defence, and merchant princes made their opulence and love of ostentation conspicuous in dwellings of imposing and picturesque design; thus pointed gables, high-pitched overhanging roofs, stamp with mediaeval character the present streets. Then, too, were founded rich ecclesiastical establishments; then was built the cathedral, containing among other treasures matchless bra.s.ses, a unique rood-loft, and a double triptych, the masterpiece of Memling. This sacred work made a deep impression on young Overbeck, and is known to have given a direction to his art. About the same period was also reared the Marien Kirche, enriched with bronze sacrament-house, old German triptychs and fine painted gla.s.s. This is the church in which the painter"s father, as Burgomaster, had a distinguished stall, elaborately carved; and now, on visiting the spot, I find appropriately among the treasures two chefs-d"oeuvre which the son affectionately wrought for the city of his birth. These churches are Protestant, but fortunately the worst sign of the Reformation is whitewash, and so the relics of the past are reverently conserved, and here in Lubeck, as in Nuremberg, the Madonna still holds her honoured niche, and the saints yet shine from out the painted window, even as in after-years the selfsame characters appeared on the canvases of Overbeck. Amid a.s.sociations thus sacred, encircled by a family addicted to learning and piety, to poetry and art, was the tranquil spirit of the young painter led into meditative paths; and as I took my evening walk at the setting of the sun by the side of the wooded river, under shadow of the old gateways and churches, it was not very hard to realize how the love of nature and of art grew up in the mind of the young student, and how this city of the past proved a fitting prelude to a n.o.ble life-work which set as its goal the revival of what was best and most beautiful in the olden times.
The family of Overbeck had been for generations preeminent for learning and piety, and biographers have scarcely sufficiently taken into account either the Cla.s.sic or the Christian inheritance of the painter.
Religious teaching and living came by long lineal descent (see Family Chart on page xvi.): the great, great, great grandfather, Caspar Overbeck, was a religious refugee; the next in succession, Christoph, was a Protestant pastor; and to the same sacred calling belonged his son, Caspar Nikolas, who lived into the middle of the last century.
After comes the grandfather, George Christian, Doctor of Laws; and among collaterals signally shines the great-uncle, Johann Daniel Overbeck (died 1802, aged 88);[2] this memorable man was Doctor of Theology, Rector of the Lubeck Gymnasium, and a voluminous writer; he published thirty or more treatises; among the number are "The Spirit of Religion,"
"Grounds of Agreement in Religion through the Reason and the Understanding;" also discourses on St. Peter, St. Paul, and Luther.
Facility of pen runs through the family. Two other great-uncles, Johann Adolph and Levin Conrad Overbeck, brothers of the Doctor of Theology, were Pastors: furthermore must not be forgotten the uncle, Johann George (brother of the Burgomaster), who lived till 1819, and is described as a faithful untiring pastor to an evangelical congregation, who offered his life a willing sacrifice. "Duty" might be the watch-word of all who bear the name of Overbeck. Lastly, and not least, appears the pious, learned, and aesthetic father, Christian Adolph. Though not in holy orders, he concerned himself variously with religion in the wide and vital sense of the word, holding it a divine presence, the rule of life, and the inspirer of all n.o.ble work. I should judge he was not dogmatic in creed, nor rigid in ceremonial. He was philosophic, but had too much heart to be a rationalist; too much imagination for an anti-supernaturalist. He was a mystic pietist; religion blending with poetry coloured his whole mind; revelation, nature, and art, were for him one and indivisible. And this I believe to have been the mental state of the son while yet under the parental roof. The sequel will show a change; the incert.i.tude of speculation could not be sustained, and so anchorage was sought within an "Infallible Church." Yet for the right reading of a character curiously subtle and complex, it is needful to realise the fact that the seeds sown in the homestead were never uprooted, that it was, indeed, the old stock which sustained the new grafting, and that, to the last, a poetic mysticism dwelt in the chambers of the artist"s mind. And as was the tree so were the fruits; sprung from a family of preachers, the painter became an evangelist in his art.
The father, Dr. Christian Adolph Overbeck, as the formative type of the son, merits a further word.[3] If not quite a genius, he was the model of a scholar and a gentleman; besides being Burgomaster in the city of his birth, he was Doctor of Laws, Syndic of the Cathedral Chapter, and served in important political missions to Paris and St. Petersburg. He is described "Musis Amicus";[4] and not only the friend of poesy, he was a poet himself, and by virtue of the duality habitual to his mind dedicated his pen with singular impartiality to Christ and Apollo; one volume of verses being ent.i.tled "Anacreon and Sappho," another, containing a poem, on "The Love of G.o.d." These products rise somewhat above the level of respectable mediocrity, yet they have not escaped the stigma of plat.i.tudes. Goethe, however, did not disdain to make respectful mention of the poet. The painter inherited in some small degree the paternal gift; he accompanied with verses the engraved and published drawings, _Jesus as a Child in the House at Nazareth_. By the father I have also before me a "new edition," published 1831, of a collection ent.i.tled "Frizchens Lieder,"[5] so called because penned for the benefit of the youthful Frederick. The preface makes mention of "my little Frizchen" thus:--"It were better had he been an angel, but he is just a human child:" then, facetiously, it is added, "he is less ideal than saucy and conceited." Those who like myself knew only the solemnity of the painter in advanced years have a difficulty in supposing in the child such traits compatible. These songs of the domestic affections were set to music; the father, as a dilettante complete, cultivated all the harmonies whether of thought, form, or sound; the home was musical.
The family life composes into a placid, homelike picture. The parents, though well to do, were far from affluent. The stipends of the busy Burgomaster and Syndic were small, and he remained comparatively poor.
At the age of twenty-six he married a young widow with money and one daughter, and domestic cares necessarily thickened with the birth of six additional children, two daughters and four sons, of whom Frederick was the youngest. The mother, we are told, was beloved and honoured, and in addition to ordinary domestic duties, diligently a.s.sisted her children in the preparation of their school lessons; moreover it is expressly stated that her fortune contributed largely to the household expenses.
The would-be artist could not be considered unfortunate in his worldly condition; he entered on life removed equally from the extremes of riches or poverty; his parents were sufficiently well off to make it possible for him to gratify his tastes in the choice of a profession, while he was always under such pressure as to render it imperative that he should put out his full powers. His education within the limits of a provincial town was liberal; the father kept himself and his household quiet, student-like, and sequestered from the dissipation of society, and so all the better could be cultivated the budding faculties of his offspring. When the children were sufficiently advanced he joined with other parents in engaging a qualified tutor, and so formed a special cla.s.s or superior school. With affection was watched the inclination towards art of the youngest son, and anxiety lessened as the faculty strongly declared itself, for above all was dreaded "mediocrity as the deadly sin of artists." The father held that for success in art as a profession three conditions were essential; cla.s.sic training, n.o.bility of mind, and technical skill. And so in each day the foremost place was a.s.signed to cla.s.sic studies. As to the formation of character, religion stood as the corner-stone, and the maxim for the daily life was "love in a pure mind." This axiom sounds to me as the key-note to the painter"s lifelong art--an art loving in spirit and kept unspotted from the world.
But the father and son differed in this--that the one was eclectic, the other exclusive. The father, with the wide toleration of a poet-philosopher, believed in the possibility of harmoniously combining styles, Cla.s.sic, Romantic, and Christian. His views may be judged from the following:
_The Father"s Monition to study the Cla.s.sics._
With joy I see you constant in the study of the ancients. To the Greeks and old Romans was it given to stand as the everlasting lawgivers of the beautiful. Well for you that you read the cla.s.sics: above all, acquaint yourself with the glorious forerunner, Homer, of whom almost every line is a picture. Homer in the right chamber of the heart, and the Bible in the left--or _vice-versa_--in this way, it seems to me, you cannot go far astray.
_Creed for a Purist Painter._
The artist"s and poet"s mind should be as a spotless mirror: his heart must be pure and pious, at one with G.o.d and all mankind. The path to the holy Temple of Art lies apart from the world, and the painter will go on his way all the more una.s.sailed if he stand aloof from the temptations of the senses. And if the artist"s mind be a temple, then should find place therein only the figures of saints and the semblances of holy things; and even in profane representations a heavenly spirit should reign. The mind is raised by the contemplation of the master-works of genius, thus art reaches the highest summit.
It is not to be supposed that the youth while in Lubeck reached the father"s ideal; but within a stone"s throw of the house lay a Gymnasium, including a Drawing School of which the great uncle, Dr. Johann Daniel Overbeck, had been head master. Here, on the spot, I am told the nephew received from a certain Professor Federau instruction in art, and I have before me a drawing, the earliest that has come to my knowledge, which proves that the pupil was at least painstaking. The subject, in accordance with the father"s precept, is Homeric, the well-known meeting of Ulysses and Telemachus.[6] After the prevailing manner of the period, the style is cla.s.sic, according to the French school of David, and a Greek portico appropriately finds a place in the background. Young Overbeck discovered in the sequel how much he had to learn, and to unlearn; he closed Homer to open his Bible.
The time came for a change in the scene of action, the art resources of a small provincial town were exhausted, and the necessity arose for thorough academic training elsewhere. The choice in those days was not extended, and after due consideration the election fell in favour of Vienna. Accordingly, in March, 1806, at the age of seventeen, young Overbeck left Lubeck. The home-parting was tender, and might have been heart-rending could the future have been read. Never were son and parents to meet again. Frederick in sundry years, when full of honours, visited Germany, but he seemed to shrink from a return to the scenes of his youth; change in religion may have made contact painful. Yet we are told that closest communication was kept up by constant correspondence; that the father affectionately watched his son"s ill.u.s.trious career and read with lively satisfaction all announcements in the public journals.
The mother died in 1820, the father a year after: for forty years they had been lovingly united. I have visited the retired "G.o.d"s-acre,"
beyond the gates, removed from the noisy traffic of the town, and not without difficulty discovered the grave of father and mother. So dense was the overgrowth of years, that not a letter on the ma.s.sive stone could be seen; but the old man of the place, tearing away the thick mantle of ivy, revealed the words, "Here rest in G.o.d Elizabeth Overbeck, and Christian Adolph Overbeck, Burgomaster."
On reaching Vienna, the super-sensuous painter did not find a bed of roses: his tastes were fastidious, his habits exclusive, his aspirations impracticable. Of course his art remained as yet unremunerative; thus his means were scanty, and the friends he might have hoped to make turned out enemies. And it cannot be denied that the state of things in Vienna was enough to discourage and disgust an earnest, truth-seeking student. The Academy into which the Christian artist entered was under the direction of Friedrich Fuger, a painter of the French type, not without renown, but given over to the service of Jupiter, Prometheus, and Venus, and when he chanced to turn to sacred subjects, such as _The Death of Abel_ and _The Reading Magdalen_, affectation and empty pretence were his resource. I have seldom seen works more contemptible.
Overbeck was in despair, and wrote to a friend that he had fallen among a vulgar set, that every better feeling, every n.o.ble thought, was suppressed within the Academy, and that, losing all faith in humanity and in art, he turned inwardly on himself. This transcendental strain, I cannot but think, came in some measure from the conceit incident to youth; self-complaisancy was certainly a habit of mind which the painter persistently cultivated as a virtue.
Four years" work within an organised academy could not be otherwise than a gain to a tyro who had everything to learn. Director Fuger was at least thoroughly trained; talent and industry had early won him the distinction of pensioner to Rome, and he subsequently executed important frescoes in Naples, which obtain honourable mention in the history of the times. His school might be bad, but still it was a school; and the fact cannot be controverted that Overbeck issued from it an artist. He learnt what his father had laid down as essential to success, drawing, composition, technique, and his advance was such, that while in Vienna he commenced, and in part painted, _Christ"s Entry into Jerusalem_, a prized possession to this day in the Marien Kirche, Lubeck. Moreover, I am inclined to think that under Fuger he was grounded in the art of wall-painting, not only as a manipulative method, but as a system of composition and decoration; otherwise it is hard to understand how, shortly after arriving in Rome, he knew more about fresco than the Italians themselves. Overbeck and his master, however, became all the more irreconcilable because the discords lay less in the letter than in the spirit.
In order to realise Overbeck"s artistic and mental difficulties here in Vienna, and afterwards in Rome, it may be well in fewest words to indicate the perplexed state of things in Germany generally--a wide theme on which volumes have been written. We have to consider that Europe had suffered under the throes of the great French Revolution, and that then followed the galling despotism of Napoleon. Art and literature lay frozen and paralysed, and Overbeck in Lubeck and Vienna, like Cornelius in Dusseldorf, found in tyrannous sway the pseudo-cla.s.sic school of the French David, cold as marble, rigid as petrifaction, spasmodic as a galvanised muscle. But the Germans, especially the more intellectual sort, smarting under the yoke, were all the while gathering strength to reclaim nationality as their birthright. The reaction came through the romantic movement, otherwise the revival of the poetry and the art of the Middle Ages. Overbeck fell under the influence: in his Lubeck home he read Tieck"s "Phantasies on Art," and thirsted for the regeneration drawing near. In Rome the spell heightened; thinkers such as Frederick Schlegel brought over proselytes, and the painter"s early frescoes from Ta.s.so"s "Jerusalem Delivered," came as the specific products of the new era. But the School of Romance wore two aspects; the one, Poetic and Chivalrous; the other expressly Christian; and Overbeck was not content to exchange Homer and Virgil for Dante and Ta.s.so, he turned from the age of Pericles and Augustus to the nativity of Christ.
And it seemed to him that the pure spring of Christian Art had, not only in Vienna but throughout Europe, been for long diverted and corrupted, and so he sought out afresh the living source, and casting on one side his contemporaries, took for his guides the pre-Raphaelite masters. Such is the relation in which he stands to the Romantic movement.
But the election made in favour of an art born of Christianity proved for Overbeck the severer conflict, because Germany, in the generation scarcely pa.s.sed away, had experienced a studious cla.s.sic revival under the critic Winckelmann and the painters Mengs and Carstens. Goethe, too, a tyrant in power, had thrown his weight into the cla.s.sic scale, and, much to the chagrin of the young painter, declared that the highest Christian Art was but the perfecting of humanity. Moreover, cla.s.sicism had been brought within the painter"s home by a five years" sojourn in Lubeck of Carstens, the Flaxman of Germany. The father befriended the poor artist, and being well-read in Greek and Roman authors, supplied him, among other needs, with ideas for his cla.s.sic compositions. I deem these facts should be duly considered; it is wholly false to ignore the presence of a cla.s.sic element in the Christian Art of Overbeck; and just as the purest religious painters of Italy borrowed from the Pagans, so the great Christian Artist of our times culled from the antique all he could a.s.similate. It is clear to me, judging from the internal evidence of his works, that as a student Overbeck went through the usual course of drawing from the plaster cast. Many are the pa.s.sages in his compositions which might be quoted in point, particularly Biblical incidents, such as the _Expulsion from Paradise_, wherein appear undraped figures. Here are seen to advantage the generic form, the typical beauty, the harmony of line, the symmetry, which distinguish the Cla.s.sic from the Gothic. Furthermore, Overbeck from first to last eschewed the dress actually worn in the Holy Land, and deliberately draped Christ and the Apostles as Greek sages and Roman senators. I believe in so doing he was on the whole wise, his motive being to remove his characters from the sphere of common life; even for him, the most single-minded of men, art was a compromise: but while borrowing thus largely both in figure and costume from the Cla.s.sic, it were vain to contend that his creations had an exclusively Christian origin. I may add that I do not think the controversy lies so much between religions as between historic Schools of Art. Overbeck was so much the artist that, like Raphael, he made beauty wherever extant his own, only caring that whatever was taken from the Pagan should be baptized with the Christian spirit. Thus much indeed is confessed in his explanatory text to his master-work the _Triumph of Religion in the Arts_. Therefore in quoting his own words the subject may fairly be allowed to drop: he writes: "Although heathenism, as such, should be looked upon by the Christian painter with decided disdain, yet the arts as well as the literature of the ancients may be turned to advantage, as the children of Israel employed the gold and silver vessels which they brought with them out of Egypt in the service of the true G.o.d in His Temple, after melting them down and consecrating them anew."
The much abused Director Fuger was the champion, as we have seen, of hybrid cla.s.sicism, hence the hostility between master and pupil. The precise att.i.tude a.s.sumed by the contending parties it is not very easy to define; but that there were faults on both sides may easily be conceded; that each was in extreme is also evident, and that Overbeck was the last man to yield an inch or to meet half way is equally certain. The fatal conflict broke out in differences as to the modes of study: of the Academy we should now say that it was conventional, wedded to false methods, in short, that it had wholly lost the right road in the devious paths of decadence. The young innovators, not choosing to conform, a.s.sumed a defiant position a.n.a.logous to, though not identical with, that taken half a century later by our English pre-Raphaelite brethren. The study of the early masters in the royal collection they preferred to the routine of the Academy; thus Durer and Perugino were held up in challenge to Correggio and Rubens, the idols of the day. Then the discord was equally violent as to the right mode of studying nature.
The charge made against the German pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was that they dealt with the life-model crudely and inartistically; on the contrary, Overbeck and his adherents declared that they sought for nothing else than truth, only they held that nature should not be studied superficially, but with the end of deciphering her hidden meanings. The human body they looked on as a temple, the face they read as the mirror of the mind. All this, and much more besides, though then a novelty, is now an old story; the doctrine that the bodily form is moulded on the spiritual being, the speculations concerning the relations between the "objective" and the "subjective," the outward and the inward, the correspondence between the world of sense and the world of thought, have one and all taken definite place in the history of mental philosophy. We have here fully to realise that Overbeck had breathed the atmosphere of mystic spiritualism in Lubeck; hence his entrance into "spiritual art," hence his "soul pictures." His mind being thus sublimated, he looked down upon the Viennese Academicians as common and unclean; a rupture naturally ensued, and he and his companions being in the minority, were with a strong hand, and with little ceremony, expelled from the cla.s.ses. The blow for the moment seemed overwhelming, yet it brought salvation. Had Overbeck remained chained to the Academy, art through him would not have seen a new birth. His course became clear: he quitted Vienna for Rome, the city of his desire.
In the fourth and last year of the painter"s apprenticeship in the Austrian capital, was begun a really arduous composition, _Christ"s Entry into Jerusalem_.[7] The picture is of the utmost import as affording the only evidence of the artist"s attainments in Vienna. In the first place to be remarked is the striking fact that not a vestige remains of the French school of David, or of the showy masters of the Italian decadence; the work, indeed, might have been designed as a protest against the Viennese Academy, and as a justification of the painter"s revolt. The style adopted is conjointly that of the Italian pre-Raphaelite and of the early German and Flemish masters. The background is built up into a high horizon giving support to the foreground figures; the colours are deep and l.u.s.trous, and so far contrast favourably with the weaker and cruder tones unfortunately adopted at a later period. The costume is a deliberate compromise between the cla.s.sic and the naturalistic. Nowhere does the artist venture, as Horace Vernet, on the Bedouin dress. Christ is clothed in a flowing robe, while the Apostles, as in the compositions of Raphael, belong less to the Holy Land than to the Roman Forum. This treatment of draperies was adhered to through all subsequent works, the only change being further generalisation and a wider departure from naturalism. In fact it is curious to observe in this early work how much nature enters; figures and incidents come direct from life, as witness portraits of contemporaries, groups of little children, young mothers and aged women.
Such pa.s.sages are happily dest.i.tute of what the Viennese academicians called "style;" they have more of the old German angularity than of "the Grecian bend." Yet always with Overbeck Beauty is present, only not thrust in, as by the academicians of the period, in violation of Truth and Goodness. Also very noteworthy is the impress of thought in the heads, hands, and att.i.tudes; the painter, as we have seen, came of a family of thinkers, and the purport of his art was to give expression to mind. Here again he took as his teachers the early masters, so that these figures, though more or less studied from nature, might seem to have walked out from an old panel picture, yet they are more than complications, they are impressed with the painter"s own individuality.
Altogether the work marks not only a starting-point in Overbeck"s life, but a new era in the art of the nineteenth century.
The composition by lapse of time gains biographic and historic value through the introduction, in accordance with the practice of the old masters, of contemporary portraits. The painter has placed among the spectators his father, in character of Burgomaster, also close by, his mother, a remarkably shrewd old lady. His wife, memorable as a beauty, is grouped with the three Marys, and by her side sports the painter"s much-loved son, a boy, palm-branch in hand, rejoicing with the mult.i.tude. Nor are the pilgrim painters in Rome forgotten: Overbeck and his brother artists, Cornelius and others, appear at respectful distance, gazing on Christ riding into Jerusalem.
Overbeck, before quitting Vienna, pretty much determined his vocation: he resolved to dedicate his life to Christian Art. On the point of departure, in writing to a friend in Lubeck, he takes a retrospective view, and also points to the future. He recalls evening walks under the shade of trees with congenial companions; he remembers earnest conversations on poetry, painting, and other manifestations of the beautiful, yet still something remained wanting. True art, he writes, he had sought in vain: "Oh, I was so full of it, my whole fancy was possessed by Madonnas and Christs; I bore these impressions about with me, I cherished them, but nowhere could I find response." In Vienna, as we have seen, the desire of his soul remained unsatisfied. His conflicts were painful, but once for all he declares, "I will abide by the Bible; I elect it as my standing-point." A few friends were like-minded, and one especially, who had come from Italy, encouraged a pilgrimage to the land of Christian Art. Accordingly, Overbeck packed up his small worldly possessions, of which the canvas of _Christ"s Entry into Jerusalem_ was the most considerable, and at length he reached Rome as a haven of rest.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: The Overbeck house, when I sought it out in 1880, was rebuilt and retenanted; the ground floor happens to be now occupied by a bookseller and fancy stationer, who sustains intact the Protestant character of the establishment. In vain I enquired for engravings from Overbeck; the nearest approach to religious art was a portrait of Luther in chromo-lithography!]
[Footnote 2: See "Leben Herrn Johann Daniel Overbeck, weiland Doctors der Theologie und Rectors des Lubeckischen Gymnasiums, von einem nahen Verwandten, und vormaligen Schuler des Verewigten." Lubeck, 1803.]
[Footnote 3: See "Zur Erinnerung an Christian Adolph Overbeck, beider Rechte Doctor und Burgermeister zu Lubeck." Lubeck, 1830.]
[Footnote 4: I have seen in the Public Library, Lubeck, the engraved portrait inscribed with the above words; the head bears a striking resemblance to the well-known features of the son: the profile shows a fine intellectual type, the forehead is ample and overhanging, the coronal region full, the eye searching and earnest, the upper lip long, the mouth large and firmly set. The last was not the most beautiful feature in the painter"s remarkable face.]
[Footnote 5: "Frizchens Lieder, herausgegeben von Christian Adolph Overbeck: neue Ausgabe." Hamburg, Verlag von August Campe, 1831.]
[Footnote 6: This juvenile exercise, probably only a copy, was given by young Overbeck to his master, and is now in the Town Library; it is washed in with Indian ink, measures two feet by one foot nine inches, and is signed and dated "F. Overbeck, 1805-21 April." The Gymnasium, like the House, has recently been rebuilt, but the continuity of learning remains unbroken--boys flock to the school as in the painter"s youth. The adjoining Town Library also contains the original cartoon, drawn in Rome, for one of the frescoes ill.u.s.trative of Ta.s.so in the Villa Ma.s.simo, length about ten feet; likewise the cartoon of the Vision of St. Francis, painted in fresco in Sta. Maria degli Angeli, near a.s.sisi; the cartoon is about twenty feet long, the figures are life-size.]
[Footnote 7: This picture, on canvas, is nearly eight feet long by six feet high, the figures are about three feet. The "Lubeckische Blatter"
states that "Overbeck began the work in Vienna in 1809, in the fourth year of his art study, and there completed the background and the figures in the middle plane, and that it was taken by him to Rome in 1810." In the course of time the foreground figures were introduced, but not till 1824 did the picture reach completion. It bears the signature and date "J. F. Overbeck, 1824." Thus fifteen years elapsed between the first touch and the last, and some ten further years pa.s.sed before the canvas came to the artist"s native city. I carefully examined the painting in the Marien Kirche in October, 1880, and found it in perfect preservation, the colours unchanged, the surface untouched by time or restoration. The picture differs from the ill.u.s.tration to these pages.]