[Footnote 2: The above compositions suggest the following observations. Overbeck was in the habit of making over many years replicas with variations and improvements of favourite themes, and the dates of the successive stages are not always easily determined. Of the _Preaching of St. John_, the Düsseldorf Academy possesses an example dated 1831. Also in the same collection is a mature and almost faultless drawing, fit companion for Raphael, of _The Raising of Lazarus_; the figure of Christ is 9 inches high. Overbeck made several renderings of the universally-beloved composition, _Christ Blessing Little Children_: the most deliberate is that given in these pages. The replica in the Meyer Collection, Hamburg, is of the last decade of the artist's life, and betrays infirmity of hand. _The Entombment_, classed above among works of the first Roman period, is probably that now in the choice collection at Stift Neuburg, near Heidelberg, dated 1814, and obviously suggested by Raphael's _Entombment_ in the Borghese Palace. No drawings have better pedigree than those in this old family mansion: a predecessor of the present possessor was the artist's personal friend. The version of _The Bearing to the Sepulchre_ given in these pages is from one of the forty well-known drawings of the Gospels, and dates 1844. At Stift Neuburg I also saw in the autumn of 1880, by the courtesy of the owner, Graf von Bernus, the drawing for the _Holy Family_, chosen as an illustration to this volume; it is of utmost delicacy and beauty--the motive has evidently been borrowed from Raphael; the measurement is 1 foot 3 inches by 1 foot 8 inches.] [Footnote 3: See 'Autobiography of Joseph Führich,' published in Vienna and Pesth, 1875.] [Footnote 4: See 'Historisch-Politische Blätter für das Katholische Deutschland,' vol. lvi., part 8. Munich, 1870.] [Footnote 5: See 'Erinnerung an Christian Adolph Overbeck;' Lübeck, 1830.] [Footnote 6: The Casa Bartholdi has for some years been let as lodgings to a superior class of travellers, and is much favoured by the English. The rooms are not always accessible; the servants have been known to name, as the most convenient time for seeing the frescoes, Sunday mornings, when the tenants are attending the English Church. The Painted Chamber is suitably furnished for daily uses; _The History of Joseph_, which covers the walls, is not too serious a theme to mingle with the common avocations of domestic life: fresco-painting, in fact, is not only a national and an ecclesiastic, but likewise a domestic art.] [Footnote 7: The Royal Academy Exhibition, Berlin, 1880, contained a large coloured design for the decoration of the ceiling of the Villa Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. Thus the joint names over a period of more than half a century stand conspicuous among art-patrons.]