Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow and Philipp Veit, who jointly housed in the old Franciscan convent of Sant'Isidoro, and became known among friends and enemies by the descriptive epithet of Nazarenes. Their precept was hard and honest work and holy living; they eschewed the antique as pagan, the Renaissance as false, and built up a severe revival on simple nature and on the serious art of Perugino, Pinturicchio, Francesco Francia and the young Raphael. The characteristics of the style thus educed were nobility of idea, precision and even hardness of outline, scholastic composition, with the addition of light, shade and colour, not for allurement, but chiefly for perspicuity and completion of motive. Overbeck in 1813 joined the Roman Catholic Church, and thereby he believed that his art received Christian baptism. Timely commissions followed. The Prussian consul, Jakob Salomon Bartholdy, had a house on the brow of the Pincian Hill, called Palazzo Zuccari or Casa Bartholdy, and he engaged the quartet of Overbeck, Cornelius, Veit and Schadow to fresco a room 7 m square (now in the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin) with episodes from the story of Joseph and his Brethren. The subjects which fell to the lot of Overbeck were the Seven Years of Famine and Joseph sold by his Brethren, finished in 1818. In the same year, Prince Massimo commissioned Overbeck, Cornelius, Veit and Schnorr to cover the walls and ceilings of his garden pavilion, near St. John Lateran, with frescoes illustrative of Tasso, Dante and Ariosto. To Overbeck was assigned, in a room 5 m square, the illustration of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered; and of eleven compositions occupying one entire wall, is the Meeting of Godfrey de Bouillon and Peter the Hermit. After ten years delay, the overtaxed and enfeebled painter delegated the completion of the frescoes to his friend Joseph von Führich. The leisure thus gained was devoted to a thoroughly congenial theme, the Vision of St Francis, a wall painting 6.5 m long, finished in 1830, for the Porziuncola in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli near Assisi. Death He died in Rome in 1869. He was interred in the church of San Bernardo alle Terme. Honours Overbeck was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1864. Family His nephew Johannes Overbeck, a professor of archaeology at the University of Leipzig, was noted for his work in art history. Followers In 1843