and grew systematized under the Republic and the Empire; but Napoleon, whose genius crystallized the elements of everything in all fields of intellectual effort with which he occupied himself, did little but formally “consecrate,” in French phrase, the art of the painter of “The Oath of the Horatii” and the originator and designer of the “Fete” of Robespierre’s “Etre Supreme.”  Spite of David’s subserviency and that of others, he left painting very much where he found it.  And he found it in a state of reaction against the Louis Quinze standards.  The break with these, and with everything regence, came with Louis Seize, Chardin being a notable exception and standing quite apart from the general drift of the French aesthetic movement; and Greuze being only a pseudo-romanticist, and his work a variant of, rather than reactionary from, the artificiality of his day.  Before painting could “return to nature,” before the idea and inspiration of true romanticism could be born, a reaction in the direction of severity after the artificial yet irresponsible riot of the Louis Quinze painters was naturally and logically inevitable.  Painting was modified in the same measure with every other expression in the general recueillement that followed the extravagance in all social and intellectual fields of the Louis Quinze epoch.  But in becoming more chaste it did not become less classical.  Indeed, so far as severity is a trait of classicality—­and it is only an associated not an essential trait of it—­painting became more classical.  It threw off its extravagances without swerving from the artificial character of its inspiration.  Art in general seemed content with substituting the straight line for the curve—­a change from Louis Quinze to Louis Seize that is very familiar even to persons who note the transitions between the two epochs only in the respective furniture of each; a Louis Quinze chair or mirror, for example, having a flowing outline, whereas a Louis Seize equivalent is more rigid and rectilinear.

David is artificial, it is to be pointed out, only in his ensemble.  In detail he is real enough.  And he always has an ensemble.  His compositions, as compositions, are admirable.  They make a total impression, and with a vigor and vividness that belong to few constructed pictures.  The canvas is always penetrated with David—­illustrates as a whole, and with completeness and comparative flawlessness, his point of view, his conception of the subject.  This, of course, is the academic point of view, the academic conception.  But, as I say, his detail is surprisingly truthful and studied.  His picture—­which is always nevertheless a picture—­is as inconceivable, as traditional in its inspiration, as factitious as you like; his figures are always sapiently and often happily exact.  His portraits are absolutely vital characterizations.  And in general his sculptural sense, his self-control, his perfect power of expressing what he deemed worth