oal, chalk, or sepia the design on the full scale
required--often the size of life. For the important figures, for the
heads, hands, and draperies, studies from the life were diligently made.
Such drawings and cartoons have been and are greatly prized by
connoisseurs; for example, _The Seven Years of Famine_ was acquired by
Sir Thomas Lawrence for his collection. The reader will understand how
difficult it was for the painter to find assistants who could help in
this directly personal work, in this concentration of individual
thought; hence the prolonged time needed, extending, as we have seen, to
periods of five or ten years. Separate studies of colour were also
sometimes, if not always, made. The ultimate stage of painting upon
canvas or wall was comparatively a mechanical process.

Furthermore, we have to consider and make allowance for certain
technical notions of Overbeck and his school. The opinion upheld was
that the idea or mental conception constituted the chief value of any
art work, that outline or form was the direct language or vehicle of
such idea, and that colour, light, shade, surface-texture, or realism,
were subordinate, if not derogatory, elements. Thus it is that the works
of the master cannot be judged by ordinary standards: hence likewise the
drawings and cartoons are superior to the pictures.

Especially does Overbeck's colour stand in need of explanation or
apology. In the first place we have to take into account how far the
artist was bound to tradition; we have, for instance, to bear in mind
that in painting _The Assumption_, he was enjoined by the Church to
clothe the Madonna in white. Then comes the whole question of symbolism,
or the inherent or accepted relation between colour and thought and
feeling. Now, I think it probable that Overbeck sacrificed harmonies
pleasing to the eye for the sake of arrangements that might inculcate
doctrines or impress emotions. Certain it is that he looked on colour as
something carnal: the example of the Venetian painters warned him
against passionate excess, and so as a religious artist he felt it a
duty to use sombre pigments, tertiary tints, and low, shadowy tones.
Thus much needs explanation, yet it must always be cause for regret that
Overbeck did not take for examples such masters of colour as Fra
Angelico and Perugino, and thus gain the heavenly radiance begotten of
religion.

The art of Overbeck will live by its merits despite its defects; it is
v