Pius VII. was the Pope who, in 1804, consecrated Napoleon I. as Emperor of France. Later he opposed Napoleon's aggressions, and was imprisoned for it, first in Italy and afterwards in France. In 1814 he recovered his freedom and his dominions, temporal as well as spiritual. The above picture is, perhaps, the best example of what may be termed the official portrait (as the preceding picture is of the familiar portrait) of David. It was painted in 1805, in the apartment assigned to the Pope in the Tuileries.] This dominant artistic influence of France in the first quarter of this century is not entirely extinguished to-day. The classical spirit has never been entirely absent from any intellectual manifestation of the French; but in David and his pupils it was carried to an extremity against which the painters of the next generation were to struggle almost hopelessly. Time, which sets all things right, has placed David in his proper place; and while to-day we may admire the immense knowledge of the man as manifested in the great classical pictures, like the Horatii, the Sabines, or the Leonidas at Thermopylæ, we remain cold before their array of painted statues. His portraits--Marat, the charming sketch of Madame Recamier, his own portrait as a young man, the group of Michel Gérard and his family, and the Pope Pius VII.--give the touch of nature which is needed to kindle the fire of humanity in this man of iron. [Illustration: JUSTICE AND DIVINE VENGEANCE PURSUING CRIME. FROM A PAINTING BY PRUD'HON. This picture was painted for the Criminal Court of the Palace of Justice in Paris. At the time of the Restoration in 1816 the picture was replaced by a crucifix, and removed to the Luxembourg gallery, where it remained until 1823, when it was placed in the Louvre. It is considered Prud'hon's masterpiece.] It is as though nature had wished a contrast to this coldly intellectual type that there should have existed at the same time a painter who, seeking at the same inexhaustible fountain-head of classicism, found inspiration for an art almost morbid in excess of sentiment. Pierre Prud'hon was born at Cluny in Burgundy, April 4, 1758, the son of a poor mason who, dying soon after the boy's birth, left him to the care of the monks of the Abbey of Cluny. The pictures decorating the monastery visibly affecting the youth, the Bishop of Macon placed him under the tuition of one Desvoges, who directed the school of painting at Dijon. Here his progress was rapid, but at nineteen the too susceptible youth married a woman whose character and habits were such that his life was rendered unhappy thenceforward.