But as they are supposed to be pictures of Italian manners, the contrast between nature and the artificial construction is almost more irritating than it is in David's mythological representations. It is as if Robert had really never seen any Italian peasants, though he maintains all the while that he is depicting their life. The hard outlines and the sharp bronze tone of his works are a ghastly evidence of the extent to which the sense of colour had become extinct in the school of David. It was merely form that attracted him; the sun of Italy left him indifferent. The absence of atmosphere gives his figures an appearance of having been cut out of picture sheets. O great artists of Holland, masters of atmospheric effect and of contour bathed in light, what would you have said to such heartless silhouettes! In his youth Robert had been a line engraver, and he adapted the prosaic technique of line engraving to painting. However, he was a transitional painter, and as such he has an historical interest. He was a modern Tasso, too, and on the strength of the adventurous relationship to Princess Charlotte Napoleon, which ultimately drove him to suicide, he could be used with effect as the hero of a novel. Through the downfall of the school of David his star has paled--one more proof that only Nature is eternal, and that conventional painting falls into oblivion with the age that saw it rise. "I wished to find a _genre_ which was not yet known, and this _genre_ has had the fortune to please. It is always an advantage to be the first." With these words he has himself indicated, in a way which is as modest as it is accurate, the ground of his reputation amongst contemporaries, and why it is that the history of art cannot quite afford to forget him. [Illustration: L. ROBERT. THE COMING OF THE REAPERS TO THE PONTINE MARSHES.] Amongst the multitude of those who, incited by Robert's brilliant successes, made the Spanish staircase in Rome the basis of their art, _Victor Schnetz_, by his "Vow to the Madonna" of 1831, specially succeeded in winning public favour. At a later time his favourite themes were the funerals of children, inundations, and the like; but his arid method of painting contrasts with the sentimental melancholy of these subjects in a fashion which is not particularly agreeable. [Illustration: SCHNETZ. AN ITALIAN SHEPHERD.]