d man appears clouded.
This, as we have seen, was for the young painter a time of doubt and
difficulty, and the face remains as yet unillumined. The next known
portraits come at a long interval, and show marked changes, which tell
of deep and not wholly blissful experiences. In 1837, Carl Kuchler, who
made a series of portraits of German painters living in Rome, took and
engraved the likeness of Overbeck at the age of forty-eight. The head is
most striking and impressive; the coronal regions, the reputed abode of
the moral and religious faculties, rise in full development; the frontal
lobes of the intellect, with the adjacent territories of the
imagination, bespeak the philosopher and the poet, while the scant
circuit of the posterior organs gives slight sign of animal passion. The
mien is that of a mediaeval saint--austere, devout; the eyes steadfastly
gaze as on hidden mysteries, yet shine with spiritual radiance; the
brow, temple, and cheek are those of the child, yet thinker; all the
features have settled into meditative repose, gently shaded by
melancholy. Overbeck, at this time in close converse with Heaven, had
given himself unreservedly to Christian Art; hence this supremely ideal
head. The portrait, contributed to the autograph collection of artists'
heads in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, pleased neither the painter nor
any one else, yet it was carried out on the favourite doctrine of
uniting the inward with the outward man. The style is hard and dry, the
character that of starved asceticism; the expression is Jesuitical, and
actual traits are so exaggerated as barely to escape caricature. The
artist was painted by Carl Hoffmann, also, it is said, by Genelli and
Ernst Deger. The portraits in late life, whilst preserving personal
identity, betray somewhat painfully the inroads of age and ill health.
Rudolf Lehmann made a faithful study in 1853; Adolf Grass, an inmate in
the house, painted in oils a portrait in 1865; and Professor Bendemann,
in 1867, prevailed upon the diffident old man to give a sitting. Two
years later death entered the house, and Friedrich Geselschap, a friend
and artist from Dusseldorf, came a few hours after the eyes were closed,
and made a full-size chalk drawing of the head as it peacefully lay on
the pillow. This faithful transcript, now on the table before me,
scarcely sustains the statement of some writers, that the countenance
after death assumed a glorified aspect; but, whether living o