The work in the Library of the Chamber of Deputies consists of two hemicycles of "Peace" (Orpheus bringing Civilisation to Greece) and "War" (Attila bringing Barbarism back to Italy), and twenty pendentives--four in each of the five cupolas--with connecting ornamental bands and cartouches. In the first cupola, Poetry is illustrated by "Alexander and Homer's Poems," "The Education of Achilles," "Ovid with the Barbarians," and "Hesiod and the Muse." Theology is the subject of the second dome: "Adam and Eve," "The Babylonian Captivity," "The Death of St. John," and "The Tribute Money." Law of the third: "Numa and Egeria," "Lycurgus," "Demosthenes," and "Cicero"; Philosophy of the fourth: "Herodotus," "Chaldean Shepherd Astronomers," "Seneca's Death," and "Socrates"; and Science of the fifth: "The Death of Pliny," "Aristoteles," "Hippocrates," and "Archimedes." Each pendentive depicts, not a single figure, but an admirably composed scene of history or legend. The series was commenced in 1837 and completed in 1847. The two hemicycles are painted in the encaustic manner direct upon the wall, whilst all the rest is executed in oils on canvas. The decoration of the Library in the Luxembourg Palace took from 1845 to 1847. It consists of a fan-shaped hemicycle of over 30 feet in width, the subject of which is Alexander, after the Battle of Arbela, ordering the works of Homer to be enclosed in a golden casket captured from the Persians; and the paintings in the cupola--a composition in four parts but without division (Dante presented to Homer by Virgil, a group of Greek philosophers, Orpheus charming the beasts, and illustrious Romans), and four pendentives, St. Jerome, Cicero, Orpheus, and the Muse of Aristoteles. ===================================================================== PLATE VII.--THE EXECUTION OF THE DOGE MARINO FALIERO (In the Wallace Collection) Delacroix himself considered this picture, which was painted in 1826, to be his masterpiece. Exhibited first at the Salon of 1827, when "The Death of Sardanapalus" caused a veritable torrent of abuse to be showered upon the artist, it failed to attract the favourable attention which its nobly balanced design, brilliant colour, and intensely dramatic feeling would otherwise surely have commanded, and which was given to it in the following year by the London public. "Marino Faliero" is unquestionably the finest example of Delacroix's art in England. [Illustration: PLATE VII.--THE EXECUTION OF THE DOGE MARINO FALIERO] =====================================================================