s conspicuous by long hair and strange
costume, and through their exclusiveness and sanctity won as their
nickname the epithet of "Nazarites." Other designations were less
characteristic; simply descriptive are such terms as "pre-Raphaelites,"
"the new-old School," "the German-Roman artists," "the Church-Romantic
painters," "the German patriotic and religious painters." But all
trivial imputations weigh lightly when set in the balance against solid
work and holy living. The earnest devotees in the long run silenced evil
tongues and won respect and a good name. Niebuhr, ambassador and
historian, by no means a blind apologist, describing the art society of
the day, writes: "The painters in Rome are divided by a broad line of
demarcation into two parties--the one consisting of our friends and
their adherents, the other of the united phalanx of those who are of the
world, a set who intrigue and lie and backbite; they intend there shall
not be light, come what will. The former are exemplary in their lives;
the latter display the old licentiousness which characterised the German
artists in Rome thirty years ago. Happily, at the present moment, the
more talented of the newcomers are ranged on the side of our friends. It
is a hopeful sign that some foreigners, and even Italians, are beginning
to pay attention to their works." Overbeck and his more immediate
associates were indeed, in the best sense of the term, "purists" and
"pietists," and held vitally to the maxim that they who would know of a
doctrine must live out the doctrine. On no other conditions was it
possible to accomplish their mission--the regeneration of art. The
schools around them had fallen in great measure through lack of
sincerity and truth; they in contrast believed as our English Bishop
Butler taught, that conscience is the ruling faculty in the human mind.

The style of art dominant in Rome during Overbeck's early residence did
not materially differ from that which he had left behind him in Vienna.
The Director, in fact, of the Viennese Academy had in youth won the
prize of Rome, and there became the representative of the prevailing
decadence. Among the Italians, Battoni, following in the footsteps of
Carlo Maratti, was not without the grace and the beauty of Correggio and
Guido. Descending a generation later, Overbeck found among his
contemporaries Pietro Benvenuto, one of the most distinguished adherents
of the school of David: whose masterpiece in Arezzo