Overbeck

by J. Beavington Atkinson

Northern Germany claimed the illustrious painter as her son, and so fitly came commissions from Cologne, Lübeck, and Hamburg. For the great Hospital in this last commercial town was painted the large oil‑picture, Christ's Agony in the Garden. This impressive composition represents the Saviour kneeling; the head is bowed in anguish, the hands are raised in ecstasy; below, the three disciples lie asleep, and in the glory of the upper sky amid rolling clouds appears as a vision the angel bearing the cross. I paid a visit to Hamburg in order to judge of a work of which I could find but slight mention. Its characteristics are just what might have been anticipated. The drawing is studious, the expression intense, the execution feeble; in short, the technique becomes wholly subordinate to the intention. The conception has Giottesque simplicity: the shade of night brings solemnity, and the longer I stood before the canvas the more I became impressed with the quietude and fervour of the scene.[8]

We find an epitome of Overbeck's mind and art in a lovely composition, Lo Sposalizio. Count Raczynski had as far back as 1819 given a general commission, and at first was proposed as a subject the Sibyl, for which the drawing in sepia, dated 1821, now hangs in the Count's Gallery in Berlin. The figure, pensive and poetic, resembles a mediæval Saint rather than a Sibyl. The painter afterwards found a more congenial theme in The Marriage of the Virgin. The treatment is wholly traditional, the style austerely pre‑Raphaelite; the only expletive in the way of an idea comes with attendant angels, lyres in hand. The work was not delivered till 1836, in the meanwhile the first fire had died out, and nature was thrust into the distance. The technique had not improved, the material clothing becomes subject to the mental conception, thus are eschewed chic of touch and surface texture. The colour is indescribable: it pertains neither to earth nor to heaven, and yet it has more of dull clay than of iridescent light. What a misfortune that the gem‑like lustre of the early Italians escaped this modern disciple! A thoroughly characteristic letter accompanied the picture. Overbeck having shut himself out from the world, seeks for his creations a like seclusion. He writes to Raczynski: "As you are wishing to send my picture to the public exhibition in Berlin, I cannot refrain from expressing my anxiety. Paintings of this kind appear to me not fitted to be seen by the motley multitude usually gathered together in exhibitions. The general public are almost sure to measure wrongly works like this, for as the eye is attracted to outward means and is engaged on technical splendours, pictures in which these qualities are held in subordination to higher aims cannot but sink into the shade. The spectator is not in the mood to honour a spiritual subject which has been thought out from a spiritual side. The place in which this picture should be seen is a chapel, or some such peaceful spot removed from disturbing surroundings."[9]

I now wish to direct the reader's attention to The Triumph of Religion in the Arts, otherwise The Magnificat of Art, or The Christian Parnassus, or the triumph of Mariolatry. This large and elaborate composition embodied the artist's best thoughts for ten years in the prime of life, from 1831 to 1840. Accompanying the work was a written explanation, which comprises a confession of Overbeck's art faith.[10] The Madonna, with the Infant in her arms, sits enthroned in the upper half of the canvas, and around, in mid‑heaven, are ranged prophets, evangelists, and saints. On the earth below stand some sixty painters, sculptors, and architects; the heads as far as possible are taken from authentic portraits. In the midst is a fountain, the upper waters rising into the sky, the lower falling into two basins beneath. The painter explains his meaning as follows: "The fountain in the centre is the emblem of the well of water springing up into eternal life, thus denoting the heavenward direction of Christian Art as opposed to the idea of the ancients, who represented the stream as flowing downwards from Mount Parnassus. Every manifestation of art therefore is honoured so far only as it looks towards heaven. The fountain descends into two mirrors: the upper one reflects heaven, the lower receives earthly objects; thus is indicated the twofold character of art, which, on the one hand, in its spiritual essence comes with every good thought from above, and which, on the other, is derived from the outward forms of nature. This twofold sphere of art is signified by the position assigned to the assembled artists in relation to the two mirrors of water." Overbeck next proceeds to expound his pictorial judgments. He gives Raphael a white robe as symbolic of universal genius, "for as white light contains the seven prismatic colours, so does Raphael's art unite all the qualities we gaze on with wonder." Michelangelo sits apart on a fragment of antique sculpture, his back turned alike on the Fountain and the Madonna. I once ventured to ask Overbeck in his studio for some explanation 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, Dürer, 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 may be encouraged thereby in your noble task. Strive to approach the great masters with all the powers of your mind, but know that you can only reach their eminence by steadily keeping in view the goal which I have endeavoured in this painting to place before you. Several of the artists here assembled may serve as warnings to you: the Venetians went astray as soon as they made colouring the principal object of attraction, and so by degrees they sank in sensuality. The effeminate Correggio proceeded in this career at a more rapid rate, until he had cast aside every restraint of modesty and morality, and gave himself up to unbridled voluptuousness.[12] Michael Angelo set up the antique as an object of idolatry, and Raphael was tempted to taste the forbidden fruit, and so the sin of apostasy in the fine arts became manifest. In after times, indeed, various attempts have been made to elevate the arts; but as no remedy was applied to the source of the evil, the result proved on the whole unsuccessful. This is also the reason why none of the celebrated masters of late times have been introduced into our painting.[13] In conclusion, you may unhesitatingly adopt as a principle that the fine arts can alone be beneficial to man when, like the wise virgins, they go out to meet the bridegroom in humility and modesty, with their lamps burning and fed with the faith and the fear of God: only as such daughters of heaven are they worthy of your love."

Ten years of the painter's later period, reaching from 1843 to 1852, were dedicated to the Life of Christ as recorded by the four Evangelists. German artists of the modern time have revived the practice of the old religious painters of composing Biblical series, and such a narrative is technically termed a "cyclus." Overbeck evolved three such consecutive compositions—"The Gospels" in forty cartoons, "The Sacraments" in seven, and "The Stations" in fourteen. The large drawings for "The Gospels" or "Evangelists"[14] I was accustomed to see from time to time while in progress within the studio; none were ever carried out, as the artist might have hoped, in oils, or as wall pictures or tapestries, but all, in common with most of his drawings, have been widely diffused by means of engraving.[15] Overbeck was specially qualified by his habits of mind and literary tastes and antecedents thus to write off his thoughts in outline; his drawings may be compared to "thinking aloud," and one scene after another reads as consecutive sonnets bearing on continuous themes. The events depicted as a matter of course fall into accustomed routine; they almost of necessity begin with The Annunciation and end with The Ascension. Yet Overbeck, while inspired was not enslaved by his predecessors; often are presented novel and even bold conceptions, as in The Massacre of the Innocents (1843) and Barabbas released and borne in Triumph (1849). Such designs prove an intellect neither

servile nor sterile. Certain other compositions are marred by affectation and sentimentality, traits of morbid moods increasing with years, and which contrast strangely with the healthiness and robustness of the great old masters. Fitly have been chosen to illustrate these pages The Naming of St. John (1843), Christ Healing the Sick (1843), Christ's Entry into Jerusalem (1849), The Entombment (1844), and The Resurrection (1848). Two other illustrations, Christ in the Temple and Christ falling under the Cross show variations on the Gospel series. Overbeck may be compared to certain fastidious writers who mature by endless emendations and finishing touches; he loved to recur oft and again to favourite texts, changing attitudes, adding or subtracting figures, episodes, or accessories. His lifelong compositions are as a peopled world of the elect and precious: many of the characters we claim as old acquaintances; the figures come, go, and return again, changed, yet without a break in personal identity. They move round a common centre; Christ is their life; they are in soul and body Christian.

These "Gospels" have taken a permanent place in the world's Christian Art. If not wholly worthy of so large and grand a theme, they yet scarcely suffer from comparison with like efforts by other artists. They have hardly less of unction and holiness than Fra Angelico's designs, while undoubtedly they display profounder science and art. That they have nothing in common with the Bible of Gustave Doré is much to their praise; on the other hand, that they lack the inventive fertility and the imaginative flight of the Bible of Julius Schnorr indicates that they fall short of universality. These Gospels, it may also be said, pertain not to the Church militant, but to the Church triumphant; not to the world at large, but to a select company of believers. They teach the passive virtues—patience, resignation, long‑suffering, and so far realise the painter's ideal of earth as the portal to heaven. Certain spheres were beyond his ken. The marriage of Cana did not for him flow with the wine of gladness; he had no fellowship with the nuptial banquet as painted by Veronese. His pencil shunned the Song of Miriam and the Dance of the Daughter of Herodias; it could not pass, like the pen of England's epic poet, with a light fantastic touch from "Il Penseroso" to "L'Allegro;" his walk was narrow as a convent cloister; his art was attuned to the sound of the vesper bell.