en for its resting-place. The
impression on entering this secluded spot, shut in by a locked gate, is
almost startling; the eye gazes, as it were, on the actual scene: the
figures are life-size; the pictorial style is, perhaps, all the more
persuasive because it belongs to a remote time--nothing modern breaks
the spell of sacred associations. The spectator is transported to a
sphere super-mundane, and altogether religious. The dead Christ, well
modelled and a fine piece of flesh painting, lies stretched on the
ground in a white winding-sheet, and, as sometimes with the old
painters, the body seems not dead but sleeping, as if expectant of
resurrection. The composition is strictly traditional, indeed the
_Pieta_ of Perugino in the Pitti Palace has been implicitly followed:
around are the holy women weeping, with disciples and Nicodemus and
Joseph of Arimathaea. Every head, hand, and drapery, are thoroughly
studied. Dark rocks, lofty cypresses, and distant hills, make up a
landscape which adds solemnity and depth of colour. Within a few
minutes' walk of the Marien Kirche and this _Pieta_ still remains
Memling's masterpiece, which, as already related, had deeply impressed
the youthful painter while yet in the Lubeck home, but allegiance had
been long, we know, transferred from old German to Italian art, and
accordingly the style adopted recalls well-remembered compositions by
Francia, Fra Bartolommeo, and Perugino. Not a single new motive
intrudes; in fact, Overbeck no more desired a new art than a new
religion; for him the old remained unchangeably true,--sacred characters
were handed down immutably as by apostolic succession; he would
rearrange an attitude, but feared to lose personal identity; he desired
that this _Pieta_ should awaken such holy associations as environ old
pictures.

Overbeck received a commission from a Yorkshire squire, Mr. Rhodes, to
paint an altar-piece for the Protestant church of St. Thomas, in Leeds,
recently built from the design of Mr. Butterfield. Naturally the
Incredulity of the Apostle was chosen as the subject, and the picture[2]
reached completion in 1851. The composition is in no way out of keeping
with the Anglican Church; it is without taint of Romanism; but we are
told by Ernst Forster, the Munich critic,[3] that "people were not well
pleased with the work," at all events it never reached its destined
place. Mr. Rhodes had brought the picture to England from Overbeck's
studio, and bei