ital and enduring in the three mental elements of thought, form, and
composition. The last he matured and mastered with the certainty of a
science and the beauty of an art. His compositions have the exactitude,
and occasionally the complexity, of geometric problems, neither are they
without the rhythm of a stanza, or the music of a song.

How much and in what manner the art of Overbeck was due to direct
inspiration from heaven is not easy to determine. But, at all events,
the modern master, like his forerunners in the spiritual school of
Umbria, watched and waited, fasted, prayed, and painted. One who
observed him closely testifies how, while making the drawings for _The
Gospels_ and _The Seven Sacraments_, he was penetrated with the life of
Christ. From deep wells the infinite soul flowed into the finite mind,
and the art conceived in the spirit of prayer issued as a renewed prayer
to God.

The reader, I trust, has formed a judgment as to the three-fold relation
in which Overbeck and his works stand to nature, to historic precedent,
and lastly, to inward consciousness or individual character. We have
seen that the notion prevalent in Rome, that the living model was wholly
discarded, is inaccurate; bearing on this moot point may be here told an
anecdote. It is related how one morning, when the artist was engaged on
the Tasso frescoes, in the Villa Massimo, he had need of the life for a
muscular arm, and so sallied forth into the neighbouring Piazza of the
Lateran and made appeal to some men who were breaking stones on the
road. One of the number, of amazing muscle, consented to sit, but, to
the disgust of the purist painter, the man turned out to be a public
executioner, who only took to stone breaking when slack of usual work.
Another story is to the effect that, one day a fellow of terrific aspect
entered the studio, declaring he was without food, and demanding
engagement as a model. He turned out a villain, and so the aversion grew
to coming in contact with common and unclean nature. Another reason
assigned for the non-employment of models is the lack of sufficient
strength to sustain protracted study from the life. Hence recourse to
other methods: for instance, both mental and pencil notes were taken of
casual figures and incidents in society or in the public streets. John
Gibson, the sculptor, cultivated a like habit. Also a remarkable memory,
of which much might be told, served as a storehouse of pictorial
materi