The tragedy of which Stratonice was the heroine had haunted his imagination for years. He had meditated long on the subject, but had always conceived the picture on a large scale. Unfortunately, the picture had to be the same size as Paul Delaroche’s “Death of the Duke of Guise,” to which it was to serve as pendant, and Ingres was constrained to transform his grandiose conception into a miniature. Ingres took six years to paint what he called his “grand historical miniature.” And it is to be somewhat regretted that in his anxiety for archæological exactitude he invited the collaboration of the architect Hittorf. Hittorf was full of his rather excessive theories about the polychromatic architecture of the ancients. He imposed his ideas so completely on the unfortunate artist that he was permitted to paint the background of the picture. Hence the debauch of local colour, of coloured mosaics and bronzes, which threatens almost to swamp the figures. And what is worse, later archæologists have not failed to discover flaws in the pedantic architect’s too insistent details--strange anachronisms like that of placing well-known Pompeiian frescoes on the walls of the palace of Antiochus, together with motives borrowed from Greek vases at least four hundred years earlier in date. The example of this picture has had an important effect on the French school. But in spite of these defects, the picture imposes itself on the imagination. The hopeless tragedy of the situation is admirably expressed without a trace of theatrical exaggeration. We see a young man, suffering from a grave and mysterious malady, extended upon his bed of suffering. The physician called in by his despairing father stands beside him and examines him. The father himself, overcome with grief, bows his head over his son’s couch. At this moment in the chamber of death a young woman enters. She is young, charming, and melancholy. She is the second wife of the heart-broken father, the mother-in-law of the dying son. And as she walks through the room with languishing steps the physician guesses the horrible truth. The man on the bed is dying of love. By signs which cannot deceive him, the man of science has divined the dreadful passion of the son for his father’s wife. Such was, in fact, the history of Stratonice. The second wife of Seleucus Nicanor was loved by Antiochus, the king’s son by his first marriage. The doctor, Erasistratus, having surprised this secret, declared that the young man would certainly die if Stratonice was not given to him, and his father’s love was great enough to enable him to make this sacrifice.