Very rarely indeed can a good picture be made out of a funeral scene. Such a scene attending the death of a great man may be fitly produced, so long as the imagination can be used in the composition; that is to say, if there are few or no records of the actual funeral[a]; but paintings relating to the modern burial of unnamed persons are of little value as works of art, for the imagination of the artist cannot extend beyond unpleasant prosaic incidents of common acquaintance. The purpose of the funeral scenes of Courbet[b] and Anne Ancher[c] has never been explained; and the various interiors, each with a coffin and distracted relatives of the dead, by Wiertz,[d] Dalsgaard,[e] and other modern artists, are capable of bringing only misery instead of pleasure to the observer. [a] As in Rubens's Funeral of Decius, Vienna. [b] The Burial at Ornans. [c] The Funeral. [d] The Orphans. [e] The Child's Coffin. But while funerals are unsuitable for the painter, interior scenes where death has occurred and friends are watching the body, offer special inducements to artists, because the perfect stillness of the living persons represented may be properly assumed, and so the illusion of life is little likely to be disturbed through the non-completion of an indicated action. On this account these works appear very impressive when well executed, and they may take high rank even when the artist is limited in his scope by the conditions of an actual scene. Very little is required however to destroy the illusion of continuity. In Kampf's picture of the lying-in-state of William I.,[a] where many watchers are shown who are presumed to be motionless, a boy in the middle distance in the act of walking, is a most disturbing element. An example where an illusion of continuity is perfectly maintained is Orchardson's Borgia, where Cæsar Borgia stands in contemplation over the body of his poisoned victim. The silence indicated appears practically as permanent as the painted design, for any reasonable time spent by the observer in examining the picture, is not likely to be longer than that during which Cæsar may be presumed to have remained still at the actual occurrence. Scenes of approaching death may be arranged to produce a similar illusion, as for instance where those present are praying, or a single figure is waiting for the life to pass from the sick person. [a] The Night of March 31, 1888, at Berlin. [Illustration: PLATE 16 (See page 190) Hercules Contemplating Death, in Bronze, by Pollaiuolo (_Frick Collection_)]