on the whole wise, his motive being to remove
his characters from the sphere of common life; even for him, the most
single-minded of men, art was a compromise: but while borrowing thus
largely both in figure and costume from the Classic, it were vain to
contend that his creations had an exclusively Christian origin. I may
add that I do not think the controversy lies so much between religions
as between historic Schools of Art. Overbeck was so much the artist
that, like Raphael, he made beauty wherever extant his own, only caring
that whatever was taken from the Pagan should be baptized with the
Christian spirit. Thus much indeed is confessed in his explanatory text
to his master-work the _Triumph of Religion in the Arts_. Therefore in
quoting his own words the subject may fairly be allowed to drop: he
writes: "Although heathenism, as such, should be looked upon by the
Christian painter with decided disdain, yet the arts as well as the
literature of the ancients may be turned to advantage, as the children
of Israel employed the gold and silver vessels which they brought with
them out of Egypt in the service of the true God in His Temple, after
melting them down and consecrating them anew."

The much abused Director Fuger was the champion, as we have seen, of
hybrid classicism, hence the hostility between master and pupil. The
precise attitude assumed by the contending parties it is not very easy
to define; but that there were faults on both sides may easily be
conceded; that each was in extreme is also evident, and that Overbeck
was the last man to yield an inch or to meet half way is equally
certain. The fatal conflict broke out in differences as to the modes of
study: of the Academy we should now say that it was conventional, wedded
to false methods, in short, that it had wholly lost the right road in
the devious paths of decadence. The young innovators, not choosing to
conform, assumed a defiant position analogous to, though not identical
with, that taken half a century later by our English pre-Raphaelite
brethren. The study of the early masters in the royal collection they
preferred to the routine of the Academy; thus Durer and Perugino were
held up in challenge to Correggio and Rubens, the idols of the day. Then
the discord was equally violent as to the right mode of studying nature.
The charge made against the German pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was that
they dealt with the life-model crudely and inartistically; on t