aster received a visit
from his bosom friends Steinle and Fuhrich, and the three strengthened
one another as they communed on religion and the arts. Overbeck is known
to have had leanings towards a convent life, and at one time, when
seriously thinking of taking the vow, he received from the Pope friendly
admonition that his true mission lay within his art, and that by
renouncing the world his usefulness would be lessened. It can scarcely,
however, be doubted that asceticism became so much the habit of his life
as to afflict his mental condition, and to impoverish his art. Some
critics indeed point to the early picture of _The Seven Years of Famine_
as the origin of a certain starved aspect in subsequent compositions.
Pharaoh's lean kine have been supposed to symbolise the painter, and the
spare fare within the cells of St. Francis served to confirm the
persuasion that flesh and blood, in art as in life, must be kept in
subjection. Nevertheless, I for one, when on the spot, could not but
revere the pictorial outcome; when first I made acquaintance with this
plenary revelation of the painter, I had been taking a walking-tour,
knapsack on back, through the Umbrian hills and valleys, the birth-land
of St. Francis; I had become acquainted with the wall and panel
paintings of Giotto, Gentile di Fabriano, Perugino, Giovanni Santi, and
the youthful Raphael; and while looking on this heavenly "Vision," I
could not but feel that Overbeck ranked among the holy company. Unlike
most modern painters, surely he had not to worship in the outer court of
the Gentiles.

Overbeck received repeated solicitations to return to Germany: he was
asked in 1821 by Cornelius to take the directorship of the Dusseldorf
Academy, and four years later he writes in reply to the further
persuasions of Wintergerst and Mosler. He urges his incapacity for the
duties: he had learnt painting, he says, in a way difficult to impart to
others; moreover, sculpture and architecture he did not understand at
all, and as for the business matters he was without faculty. Further
difficulties were the health of his wife and the welfare of his son:
"every information," he continues, "I receive from my native country
tells me of spiritual fermentations: the sanctuary, insufficiently
protected by the law, suffers under attacks, and a proud worldly spirit
raises its head and proclaims its wisdom. Can parents be blind to the
risks to which they expose their child, till now r