husiastic study of the
Roman schools.

Of this revolution, Monsieur Ingres has been one of the chief
instruments. He was, before Horace Vernet, president of the French
Academy at Rome, and is famous as a chief of a school. When he broke
up his atelier here, to set out for his presidency, many of his pupils
attended him faithfully some way on his journey; and some, with scarcely
a penny in their pouches, walked through France and across the Alps, in
a pious pilgrimage to Rome, being determined not to forsake their old
master. Such an action was worthy of them, and of the high rank which
their profession holds in France, where the honors to be acquired by art
are only inferior to those which are gained in war. One reads of such
peregrinations in old days, when the scholars of some great Italian
painter followed him from Venice to Rome, or from Florence to Ferrara.
In regard of Ingres's individual merit as a painter, the writer of this
is not a fair judge, having seen but three pictures by him; one being a
plafond in the Louvre, which his disciples much admire.

Ingres stands between the Imperio-Davido-classical school of French art,
and the namby-pamby mystical German school, which is for carrying us
back to Cranach and Duerer, and which is making progress here.

For everything here finds imitation: the French have the genius of
imitation and caricature. This absurd humbug, called the Christian or
Catholic art, is sure to tickle our neighbors, and will be a favorite
with them, when better known. My dear MacGilp, I do believe this to be
a greater humbug than the humbug of David and Girodet, inasmuch as the
latter was founded on Nature at least; whereas the former is made up of
silly affectations, and improvements upon Nature. Here, for instance, is
Chevalier Ziegler's picture of "St. Luke painting the Virgin." St. Luke
has a monk's dress on, embroidered, however, smartly round the sleeves.
The Virgin sits in an immense yellow-ochre halo, with her son in her
arms. She looks preternaturally solemn; as does St. Luke, who is eying
his paint-brush with an intense ominous mystical look. They call this
Catholic art. There is nothing, my dear friend, more easy in life.
First take your colors, and rub them down clean,--bright carmine,
bright yellow, bright sienna, bright ultramarine, bright green. Make the
costumes of your figures as much as possible like the costumes of
the early part of the fifteenth century. Paint them in with