s from Tasso's 'Jerusalem Delivered,' came as the specific
products of the new era. But the School of Romance wore two aspects; the
one, Poetic and Chivalrous; the other expressly Christian; and Overbeck
was not content to exchange Homer and Virgil for Dante and Tasso, he
turned from the age of Pericles and Augustus to the nativity of Christ.
And it seemed to him that the pure spring of Christian Art had, not only
in Vienna but throughout Europe, been for long diverted and corrupted,
and so he sought out afresh the living source, and casting on one side
his contemporaries, took for his guides the pre-Raphaelite masters. Such
is the relation in which he stands to the Romantic movement.

But the election made in favour of an art born of Christianity proved
for Overbeck the severer conflict, because Germany, in the generation
scarcely passed away, had experienced a studious classic revival under
the critic Winckelmann and the painters Mengs and Carstens. Goethe, too,
a tyrant in power, had thrown his weight into the classic scale, and,
much to the chagrin of the young painter, declared that the highest
Christian Art was but the perfecting of humanity. Moreover, classicism
had been brought within the painter's home by a five years' sojourn in
Lubeck of Carstens, the Flaxman of Germany. The father befriended the
poor artist, and being well-read in Greek and Roman authors, supplied
him, among other needs, with ideas for his classic compositions. I deem
these facts should be duly considered; it is wholly false to ignore the
presence of a classic element in the Christian Art of Overbeck; and just
as the purest religious painters of Italy borrowed from the Pagans, so
the great Christian Artist of our times culled from the antique all he
could assimilate. It is clear to me, judging from the internal evidence
of his works, that as a student Overbeck went through the usual course
of drawing from the plaster cast. Many are the passages in his
compositions which might be quoted in point, particularly Biblical
incidents, such as the _Expulsion from Paradise_, wherein appear
undraped figures. Here are seen to advantage the generic form, the
typical beauty, the harmony of line, the symmetry, which distinguish the
Classic from the Gothic. Furthermore, Overbeck from first to last
eschewed the dress actually worn in the Holy Land, and deliberately
draped Christ and the Apostles as Greek sages and Roman senators. I
believe in so doing he was