Venus, the goddess of love, is transformed into Love immortal, "Who, stretched upon the Cross, yet reacheth out His hand to thee." [Illustration: PRUDHON. THE RAPE OF PSYCHE.] This man, with his soft tenderness and fine feeling for the eternal feminine, was as though fashioned by Nature to be the painter of women of his time. If David was the chief depicter of male faces bearing a strong impress of character, delicate, refined, womanly natures found their best interpreter in Prudhon. His heads of women charm one by the mysterious language of their eyes, by their familiar smile, and by their dreamy melancholy. No one knew better how to catch the fleeting expression in its most delicate shades, how to grasp the very mood of the moment. How piquant is his smiling Antoinette Leroux with her dress _à la_ Charlotte Corday, her coquettish extravagant hat, and all the amusing "chic" of her toilette! Madame Copia, the wife of the engraver, with her delicately veiled eyes, has become in Prudhon's hands the very essence of a beautiful soul. A languishing weariness, a remarkable mingling of Creole grace and gentle melancholy, breathes over the portrait of the Empress Josephine. She is represented seated on a grassy bank in a dignified yet negligent attitude, her head slightly bent, her gaze wandering afar with a look of uncertain inquiry, as though she had some faint presentiment of her coming misfortune; and the dreamy twilight-shadows of a mysterious landscape are gathering around her. [Illustration: PRUDHON. LE MIDI.] Coming after a period of colour asceticism, Prudhon was the first to show a fine feeling for colour. Even during the revolutionary era he protested in the name of the graceful against David's formal stiffness. He sought to demonstrate that human beings do not in truth differ very widely to-day from those in whom Leonardo and Correggio delighted, that they are fashioned out of delicate flesh and blood, not out of marble and stone. Standing beside David, he appealed to the art of colour. But as with André Chénier, a spirit congenial to his, it was long before he attained success. His modesty and his rustic character could effect nothing against the dictatorial power of David, on whom had been showered every dignity that Art could offer. People continued to ridicule poor Prudhon, who worked only after his own fantasy, who had fashioned for himself in _chiaroscuro_ a poetic language of his own, till the question was raised again from another side, and this time by a young man who came directly out of David's studio.