the fashionable masters, and nursed
on Plutarch, he applied himself to the study of the antique with a
determination to rejuvenate the painter's art and establish a school,
drawing its inspiration from heroic Greece and Rome. The successive
phases of this potent but rather theatrical genius may be well
followed in the Louvre. Neglecting for the present his earlier and
pre-revolutionary works, we retrace our steps through Room II. noting
in passing, 143, The Funeral at Ornans (a remarkable, realistic
painting by a later revolutionary, to whom we shall return) and enter

ROOM III.

on the L. wall of which hangs 188, David's famous canvas: The Sabine
Women, over which he brooded during his imprisonment in the Luxembourg
after the Thermidorian reaction. David regarded this composition as
the most successful expression of his theory of art. He studied whole
libraries of antiquities and vainly imagined it to be the most "Greek"
of all his works. Nothing, however, could be farther removed from the
tranquil self-restraint and noble simplicity of Greek art than these
self-conscious, histrionic groups of figures, without one touch of
naturalness. The old preoccupation with classic models inherited from
Poussin and the Roman school, still dominates even this revolutionary
artist, who best displays his great genius when he forgets his
theories and paints direct from life, as in 199, Mme. Recamier; and
198 (opposite wall), Pius VII. David's fierce Jacobinism (he had been
a member of the terrible Committee of Public Safety) did not prevent
him from worshipping the rising star of the First Consul, who, on
assuming the Imperial crown, appointed him court painter and
commissioned him to execute, 202A, Consecration of Napoleon I. at
Notre Dame. In this grandiose historic scene, containing at least 150
portraits, the eye is at once drawn to the central actor who, having
crowned himself, is placing a diadem on the kneeling Josephine's brow.
The story runs, that David had originally drawn Pope Pius VII. with
hands on knees. Bonaparte entering the studio, at once ordered the
artist to represent the pontiff in the act of blessing, exclaiming: "I
didn't bring him all this way to do nothing." For this picture and for
the Distribution of the Eagles 180,000 francs were paid.

[Illustration: MADAME RECAMIER. _David._]

Among the painters of the new school was Pierre Prud'hon (1758-1823),
whose fame was made by two pictures, 747 and 756, on op