More royalist than the king, and the last of David’s disciples, Ingres pursued throughout his life the even tenor of a man convinced that the source of all inspiration in art was Greek sculpture as amplified, transmuted, and translated to the realm of painting by Raphael.  Painting in his hands became almost purely a matter of form.  The element of color was virtually ignored, and form, chastened in contour and modelling, became through the magic of his genius the almost sufficient quality.  The qualification is necessary.  For though too great a man to lose, as too many of his master’s pupils did, the grasp on nature; and while, therefore, his works, seen as they are through the glamour of the antique, never lack an intimate relation to existing life, it is impossible to resist the feeling before them that it is life beautified, of exquisite yet virile choice, but of life arrested.  The reproach of his opponents of the romantic school that he was an “embalmer” has a foundation of truth.

[Illustration:  A PORTRAIT OF INGRES, DRAWN IN ROME IN 1816.

This lovely drawing, from the collection in the Louvre, shows Ingres in his most pleasing aspect.  By the magic of a few lines faintly traced, he has evoked for us the image of a charming person; and by the slight indication of costume, has also fixed the epoch at which the drawing was made.  It was in the earlier years of the master, while he was in Rome, that he drew many such little masterpieces as a means of livelihood, drawings which he then made for a few francs, and which are now eagerly sought by the museums of Europe.]

[Illustration:  APOTHEOSIS OF HOMER.  FROM A PAINTING BY INGRES.

Originally painted for a ceiling in the gallery of Greek and Roman Antiquities, in the Louvre, where it is now replaced by a copy of the same executed by Ingres’s pupils.  The picture represents Homer crowned as Jupiter by Victory, and seated before his temple receiving the homage of the poets, painters, sculptors, and architects of the world.]

[Illustration:  THE SEIZURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE BY THE CRUSADERS.  FROM A PAINTING BY EUGENE DELACROIX.

In 1203, through political intrigue, a French army, raised to take part in the fourth crusade for the rescue of Jerusalem from the Mohammedans, joined with a Venetian army in an attack on Constantinople, then a Christian city, the capital of the Byzantine Empire.  The city fell, but later was recovered.  Then, on April 12, 1204, the invaders secured it again, and subjected it to a despoilment without parallel.  Delacroix’s picture portrays a scene in this despoilment.  One of the invading barons, attended by his escort, rides on to a terrace, and the citizens fall before him, praying his mercy.  Behind lies the Bosphorous, and beyond it are the shores of Asia.]