s first sojourn at Rome almost nothing remains in
the way of painting; for the young artist, endowed with the patience
which is, according to Goethe, synonomous with genius, devoted all his
time to drawing from the antique.

It was here and during this time, doubtless, that he formed his
conviction that painting of the highest type must conform to classical
tradition--that all nature was to be remoulded in the form of antique
sculpture. But it was also at this time, and owing to his stern
apprenticeship to the study of form, that he acquired the mastery of
drawing which served him so well when in the presence of nature; and
with no other preoccupation than to reproduce his model, he painted
the people of his time and produced his greatest works. For by a
strange yet not unprecedented contradiction, David's fame to-day
rests, not upon the great classical pictures which were the admiration
of his time and by which he thought to be remembered, but on the
portraits which, with his mastery of technical acquirement, he painted
with surprising truth and reality.

The time was propitious, however, for David. France, the seeds of
revolution germinating in its soil, looked upon the Republic of Rome
as the type from which a system could be evolved that would usher in
a new day of virtuous government; and when, after a second visit to
Rome, David returned home with a picture representing the oath of the
Horatii, Paris received him with open arms. The picture was exhibited,
and viewed by crowds, burning, doubtless, in their turn to have
weapons placed in their hands with which to conquer their liberties.
This was in 1786; but years after, in the catalogue of the Salon
of 1819, we read this note: "The Oath of the Horatii, the first
masterpiece which restored to the French school of painting the purity
of antique taste."

At the outbreak of the Revolution David abandoned painting; and
on January 17, 1793, as a member of the Convention, voted for the
execution of Louis XVI. It was during this period that were painted
his pictures of Lepelletier and Marat, in which his cold, statuesque,
and correct manner was revivified and warmed to life--paradoxically
enough, to paint death. A friend of Robespierre, he was carried down
at the overthrow of the "little lawyer from Arras," and imprisoned
in the Luxembourg. His wife--who had left him at the outset of his
political life, horrified at the excesses of the time--now rejoined
him in his mi