_Jules Bastien-Lepage_; Van Dyke, _Modern French
Masters_.

THE REVOLUTIONARY TIME: In considering this century's art in Europe,
it must be remembered that a great social and intellectual change has
taken place since the days of the Medici. The power so long pent up in
Italy during the Renaissance finally broke and scattered itself upon
the western nations; societies and states were torn down and
rebuilded, political, social, and religious ideas shifted into new
garbs; the old order passed away.

[Illustration: FIG. 60.--DAVID. THE SABINES. LOUVRE.]

Religion as an art-motive, or even as an art-subject, ceased to obtain
anywhere. The Church failed as an art-patron, and the walls of
cloister and cathedral furnished no new Bible readings to the
unlettered. Painting, from being a necessity of life, passed into a
luxury, and the king, the state, or the private collector became the
patron. Nature and actual life were about the only sources left from
which original art could draw its materials. These have been freely
used, but not so much in a national as in an individual manner. The
tendency to-day is not to put forth a universal conception but an
individual belief. Individualism--the same quality that appeared so
strongly in Michael Angelo's art--has become a keynote in modern work.
It is not the only kind of art that has been shown in this century,
nor is nature the only theme from which art has been derived. We must
remember and consider the influence of the past upon modern men, and
the attempts to restore the classic beauty of the Greek, Roman, and
Italian, which practically ruled French painting in the first part of
this century.

FRENCH CLASSICISM OF DAVID: This was a revival of Greek form in art,
founded on the belief expressed by Winckelmann, that beauty lay in
form, and was best shown by the ancient Greeks. It was the objective
view of art which saw beauty in the external and tolerated no
individuality in the artist except that which was shown in technical
skill. It was little more than an imitation of the Greek and Roman
marbles as types, with insistence upon perfect form, correct drawing,
and balanced composition. In theme and spirit it was pseudo-heroic,
the incidents of Greek and Roman history forming the chief subjects,
and in method it rather despised color, light-and-shade, and natural
surroundings. It was elevated, lofty, ideal in aspiration, but coldly
unsympathetic because lacking in contempor