xplanation of this harsh judgment; he calmly but firmly replied that he
thought the verdict according to the evidence. Still less mercy is shown
to the Venetians, and as for Correggio, he is stigmatised as utterly
lost. On the other hand, Fra Angelico, the Tuscan School, Durer, and the
brothers Van Eyck receive due reverence. But it has fairly been
questioned whether the majority of the sixty or more artists here
immortalised would thank the painter for his pains. The reading given to
historic facts is narrow, partial, not to say perverted, and could
content only such ultra critics as Rio, Montalembert, and Pugin.

_The Triumph of Religion_[11] I have known for more than a quarter of a
century, and have heard much of its profundity, spiritualism, and
symbolism. But no critic will assign to the picture the first rank among
works of creative reason and imagination; the comparison has inevitably
been instituted with Raphael's _Disputa_, in the Vatican, to which it is
confessedly inferior. Historically, it finds a place sufficiently
honourable by the side of Francia and Pinturicchio. Its avowed merits
are considerable; its very scale and the vastness of the labour give
importance; the canvas extends to a breadth and height of about fifteen
feet. The composition, if not bold or masterly, is careful and
thoughtful, the drawing scholastic; the heads are wrought as biographic
studies, the draperies cast into balanced harmonies. The execution is
steady, without show or fling; the colour, as always, is the reverse of
alluring: Venetian splendours are eschewed in favour of pigments thin,
dull, and crude. Yet the technique has usual soundness; the materials
stand firm and unchanged. The picture has the advantage of a commanding
position in the handsome new gallery in Frankfort, and, notwithstanding
its defects and shortcomings, must be accounted as among the most
memorable achievements of the century.

Overbeck made _The Triumph of Religion_ a propaganda of his pictorial
faith, and wrote his explanatory text for the special benefit of young
painters. The document concludes with the following emphatic and
affectionate appeal: "And now, my dear young friend and brother artist,
so ardently striving to excel in the Fine Arts, I have placed a picture
before you in which you may wander as in a garden. Here you see all the
great masters: behold how the future lies spread before you, like the
bright distance in this picture, so that you ma