mes clouded by trouble. First came the death of his
son, then he lost a brother, and afterwards was bereaved of his wife.
All accounts tell that the darling son, Alfons Maria, inherited the rare
gifts of the father, and unhappily also was a sharer in like bodily
frailty. He had been reared with tenderest solicitude, in the hope that
he might carry on the good work. The profession chosen was that of
architecture, an art which the Christian painter felt to be of a "mystic
nature," being something "musical," and "the visible emblem of religious
enthusiasm." But the bright promise was soon darkened: the youth died in
the autumn of 1840, at the early age of eighteen. The father in
overwhelming sorrow recounts, in a letter to Emilie Linder, how he had
watched over the sick bed, and had snatched up a pencil by the quarter
of an hour to assuage his grief. The boy was dutiful, and filled with
filial love--he was so good that the people called him a saint. The
stricken parent turned to art as "a crutch to support his lameness, and
as a solace to his tears."

The picture of _The Entombment_, or rather _The Pieta_, in Lubeck, tells
of the mind's heavy burden. In 1837 an association had been formed, and
money subscribed among friends and admirers, who desired that the native
city should possess some work worthy of the painter's renown. In 1842,
on the completion of the first sketch and the cartoon, a letter arrived
in Lubeck, saying that the grief through which the artist had passed was
thrown into a composition that expressed the uttermost anguish of the
soul. And again, in 1846, on the completion of the work, the Christian
man writes, praying that this "lamentation over the death of the Son of
God may arouse in the spectator true faith and repentance. May this
painting, begun in tears for my own and only son, and finished in grief
for the loss of my dear brother, draw tears from the eyes of Him who
shed not only tears, but blood, in order that His death might be our
life. Such aim have I always in my art, without which it would seem
idle, indeed blasphemous."

_The Pieta_[1] was exhibited in Rome, and friendly criticisms were
followed by final touches, with the filial intent to make a worthy
offering to the parental city. In March, 1846, Overbeck announces, in
the most modest terms, that the labour of love had at length been
dispatched to Lubeck, and, much to his joy, a quiet side chapel of the
choir of the Marien Kirche was chos