encies: the guests wore mediaeval
costumes, and made themselves otherwise attractive; and we learn on the
authority of Madame Bunsen that among the brilliant assembly "the most
admired of the evening was Overbeck's future wife, a lady beautiful,
engaging, and influential, from Vienna."[1] The marriage, which was not
long delayed, proved on the whole happy, though the wife's delicate
health gave constant cause for anxiety, and her other demands on an
indulgent husband are said to have provoked the displeasure of Cornelius
and other friends. Two children were the fruits of the union: a girl,
who died young, and a boy, who lived only long enough to give singular
promise.

Overbeck, as we have seen, had, in common with his brethren, given his
best powers to "monumental painting." For this noble and "architectonic
art" he was not without qualifications. He moved in an exalted sphere,
his mind ranged among immutable truths, his forms were high in type, his
compositions had symmetry and concentration, he knew how to adapt lines
and masses to structural spaces. An occasion calculated to call forth
his powers came with the commission to paint in fresco _The Vision of
St. Francis_ for the church of Sta. Maria degli Angeli, near Assisi.
Overbeck here, as his custom was, remained obedient to tradition, and
yet struck out a new path; he was not content to retrace the footsteps
of Giotto or of Cigoli, he preferred to depict the vision of his own
mind. He enthrones the Madonna as Queen of Heaven, seated by the side of
the risen Saviour, surrounded by the angelic hosts. On the lower earth,
also attended by angels, appears St. Francis in adoration, while on the
other side kneel reverently two mendicant friars. The picture belongs to
the middle period, when the artist had attained the mature age of forty:
the style, speaking historically, is that of the grave and severely
defined Florentine school as represented by the Brancacci chapel. The
fresco has been accounted by some the painter's masterpiece, and it is
pronounced by Count Raczynski as one of the few works of modern days
worthy of transmission to future ages.[2]

Overbeck, it is easy to believe, while painting on the very spot where
St. Francis was in ecstasy, led a life much to his liking. He dwelt
within the monastery, and his pure mind, open only to the good, was
blind to the dissolute ways of monks who became a scandal to the
district. When the fresco was half finished, the m