In this context no work of art is more significant than, to quote the Queen, the "original beautiful cartoon" by Overbeck for his painting, Religion glorified by the Fine Arts, in the Staedelsches Kunstinstitut at Frankfurt am Main. It had been bought from the artist by Gruner in Rome in 1846 and at Christmas in the following year was given to the Queen by the Prince. He had been educated "in the full German tradition"; and the theme, that "great and beneficial art could only be based on Christian doctrine", would have struck a sympathetic chord in the hearts of the Queen and the Prince. He would have admired the strain of Raphaelesque influence in such a famous example of German romantic draughtsmanship. The Germanic quality in the draughtsmanship and the technique of such English painters as Frederic Leighton, Daniel Maclise or William Dyce led the Queen and the Prince to admire their work and to patronize them generously.

The Queen and Prince were very fond of the King of Prussia, Frederick William IV, and of his brother and eventual successor, William I. The former was godfather to the Prince of Wales; his brother, who was also a close friend of the Queen's mother and of her uncle, Leopold I, endeared himself to the Queen because he "seemed to have great confidence in my beloved Albert". Wilhelm Hensel, the Berlin court painter, visited London in 1838. In 1843, he gave to the Queen his large canvas of Miriam's Song of Praise. This was placed at Osborne, where the royal pair hung so many of their favourite and most important pictures, not far from the Overbeck and also near to Gegenbauer's fresco of Hercules and Omphale which the Prince bought in 1844, "for the study of English artists' in the technique of fresco painting. The Prince was President of the Fine Arts Commission and bore the chief responsibility for organizing the decoration of the new Palace of Westminster with works in fresco on a large scale: a project in which he had first thought - though he did not force his views upon the British public - that German artists should be employed.