Munich is identified with a friendship between Overbeck and a lady, which ranks among the most memorable of Platonic attachments. Fräulein Emilie Linder we have already encountered in Rome, where an abiding friendship was rooted, and the devoted lady, on separation, soon found occasion to open a correspondence which was prolonged over a period of thirty years. Overbeck was a persistent letter-writer; he wasted no time on society, and so gained leisure to write epistles and publish essays. And yet it cannot be said that, had he not been an artist, he would have shone as the brightest of authors. On the contrary, as with the majority of painters, he never acquired an adroitness of pen commensurate with his mastery in the use of his pencil; and it is certain that if his pictures had been without adorers, his prose would have remained without readers. The great painter was destitute of literary style; his sentences are cumbrous and confused; his pages grow wearisome by wordy repetition. Doubtless his thoughts are pure and elevated, but, lacking originality, they run into platitudes, and barely escape commonplace. The prolonged correspondence with Emilie Linder[4] contracts the flavour peculiar to polemics. Overbeck had grown into a "fanatic Catholic"; he was ever casting out nets to catch converts; his tactics were enticing; his own example proved persuasive. Moreover, about his mind and method was something effusive, which won on the hearts of emotional women. At all events, these letters brought over to the Roman Catholic Church the lady and others. And so it naturally came to pass that the bonds of union were drawn very close when the revered apostle and the devout disciple reposed within the same sheepfold. These letters have a further significance; they declare what indeed is otherwise well established, that the Catholic faith served as the prime moving power in the life and the art of Overbeck. The painter brought to Munich ten or more drawings executed in Rome with a view to his travelling expenses, and Emilie Linder lost no time in making an offer for the set, to add to her private collection. The artist, with suitable diffidence, hesitated, yet looked on the proposal as an interposition of Providence, and then begged for the money at once, to help him on his further journey into Germany. Though success had delivered him from poverty, and commissions came in faster than he could paint, yet at no time did he roll in wealth; spite of scrupulous economy, he never much more than paid his way; and a few years later, when, for Emilie Linder, engaged on _The Death of St. Joseph_,[5] he gladly accepted beforehand the price by instalments. The correspondence shows a tender conscience, with a humility not devoid of independence. The art products were in fact of so high a quality that the painter conferred a greater favour than any he could receive in return.