an sky and landscape. After sufferance of the rigours of northern
winters, mind and body expanded under the sun of the genial south. In
spring-time came days serene as his own spirit, giving to nature the
re-birth he sought for art; the clear horizon carried thought to a world
beyond; and in the deep blue above floated such clouds as had served the
old pre-Raphaelites with the thrones and footstools of saints and
angels. Overbeck did not, as the masters of the decadence, shroud his
compositions in backgrounds of impenetrable darkness, but flooded the
canvas with the light of the Italian heavens, and like the early
painters, placed holy people in the midst of such beauties of nature as
tranquillise and elevate the mind. And his sympathetic eye was not only
open to scenes which served as distances, he watched in the gardens of
the Roman villas the springing flowers, and made careful studies of
mossy, jewelled foregrounds which served as carpeting for the feet of
his Madonnas. Having turned his back on the Fatherland, his pictures
bear no memories of black forests or frowning Harzburg mountains, and he
became so thoroughly Italianised that he seated Holy Families on the
borders of the Thrasymene Lake, and placed saints within sight of Mount
Soracte! Like all true artists, he painted what he saw; as his
predecessors, he gathered in daily walks the accessories he needed. Fra
Angelico had painted at Fiesole, Francia at Bologna, Perugino at
Perugia, Pinturicchio at Spello and Siena, and each in turn, like
Overbeck, made the surrounding scenery serve as accompaniments to figure
compositions. Nature was to all these painters a great teacher; her
presences were healing powers, and they left out all the storms and
discords, and like our poet Wordsworth, brought her forms and aspects
into harmony with tranquil living. Yet the Brethren from their monastic
abode in Sant' Isidoro looked upon the outer world with sympathies as
diverse as their individual characters. When Cornelius took his walks
abroad, he crossed the Tiber to visit the _Last Judgment_ of
Michelangelo. Overbeck's steps lay in an opposite direction; he passed
by the church of Sta. Maria Maggiore, looked in for the sake of the old
mosaics, and then wended his solitary way to Sta. Croce in Gerusalemme,
to pay his devotions before the frescoes commemorative of the discovery
by St. Helena of the true Cross. Here, in lovely surroundings, nature
blended in unison with art, he l