The whole church has been painted in polychrome; red shafts and gilded capitals, a blue-and-gold starred vault. All round nave, transepts, and choir, just below the clerestory, are the exquisite frescoes by Flandrin, one of the few 19th century religious painters who has shown the possibility of uniting the sentiment of the early Florentine and Flemish schools with the, in some respects, superior knowledge of the modern. His work is so purely religious, and yet so essentially modern, that one wonders whence he drew his inspiration. There is nothing of the Archaic in his pictures; his figures are never attenuated, and yet the sentiment is as full of piety as in the work of Angelico: it is as if the Frenchman had drunk in the beauty of form of the Greeks, and amalgamated it with the faith of the Early Christians. And yet there is none of the false sentimentality of the modern school, the Saints who simper, and the milk-and-water misses bearing palm branches and crowns, and calling themselves martyrs. Flandrin's is essentially a masculine type of art; it is powerful as well as graceful, vigorous as well as refined. His Saints and Angels have all the sweet expression of those of Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi; while they are as perfectly modelled as a Greek Apollo, or the figures of Buonarroti and Raffaello. But Flandrin was not ashamed of calling himself a believer in the doctrines and mysteries of the Christian faith, and in the Biblical subjects which he was called upon to illustrate. The man who considered religious painting to be "the height of Art, and the most worthy employment of genius," and who wrote upon the door of his studio, "Thou, Lord, hast made me glad through Thy work, I will triumph in the works of Thy hands," could not have been, as a Christian, on a much lower level than Fra Angelico, who is said to have painted while assuming the attitude of prayer. Flandrin was the favourite pupil of Ingres, and won the Grand Prix de Rome of 1832. Humble-minded, gentle, courageous, he worked for love rather than for fame or money. His early struggles when he first arrived in Paris from his native place were terrible. He lived in a veritable garret with his brother, sacrificing anything in order to work at painting. Often in winter they went to bed at 5 o'clock in the afternoon to escape the cold of their attic. Their dinner was frequently some fried potatoes bought at stalls in the streets and squares; and it is probably to the privations endured for love of art that his bad health and early death may be attributed. But his enthusiasm carried him on; and he lived long enough to count his sacrifices as nothing compared to his successes. He stands out in this 19th century an example to all artists, and as the one man who can be compared to the blessed monk of Fiesole.