last great effort to be necessary, to achieve--though at the cost of human lives--the freedom of humanity as a whole. This alone can explain why revolutionaries who pursued their ends through rivers of blood, seem at times inspired with a noble and unexpected humanitarianism; why they were nearly all tender and devoted men in their private family life. Danton idolized his wife and children, the letters of Camille Desmoulins to his bride are beautiful and touching, and Robespierre, the solitary, the incorruptible, whose private life was beyond criticism, was a great lover of nature, who brought, we are told, bunches of wild flowers home with him from his long walks. With the portrayal of Brutus (now in the Louvre), who, because of his profound respect for justice permitted the execution of his sons, we find ourselves on the threshold of the revolution. Brutus, with stern, dark countenance, is seated before the Goddess of Justice, while behind him the bodies of his sons are borne across the scene and the grieving mother and sisters cling together in the pillared hall of their dwelling. While today we feel the construction of this picture to be far too studied, and are inclined to dub it academic, David’s intention was directed precisely against the then accepted traditional formulas. Whoever dreamed, said contemporary criticism, of placing the principal figure in the shadow or planning a composition without regard to the triangular construction? David left the centre of the canvas purposely free. Our eyes fall first on a column, a chair, a still life arrangement on a table, frankly at the expense of the composition’s unity. The incidentals were drawn with extraordinary care. In order to assure the accuracy of the classic furnishings, David had the cabinet maker, Jacob, make the pieces for him after his own designs. The painting created such an extraordinary sensation that not only did it give the first impetus to the Parisian vogue for classic furniture, but women’s fashions were definitely influenced by the loosely coifed hair and long flowing garments of the feminine figures. Not the least significant part of David’s contribution to art is the influence he exerted on the decorative arts and on fashion. It is very rare that the influence of a single artist’s work on a bygone style can be so clearly measured as in the case of David, from whose art the decorative art of the Empire period derived. Only an artist who is much in the public eye can sway styles, and David became one of the heroes of the day when this composition was exhibited in the Salon of 1789--the year whose autumn was to see the outbreak of the revolution. Perhaps no other picture has ever played so great a rôle in the political and social life of a nation as this work, which is by no means its author’s finest production, much less among the finest of art history. All of which goes to prove how unreliable popular taste is when it comes to a question of contemporary art.