class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="48"/> up with magic skill the splendours and graces of that immortal mother of letters and arts, Greece beloved by the gods,—the following pictures, The Idyll (1853), full of charm and solid erudition; The Greek Interior (1856), of sure and penetrating art; King Candaules (1859), in which the sumptuous beauty of Nyssia illumines the bed-chamber of a Heraclid, 700 years B.C., and in which the interest of the picturesque anecdote is enhanced by the artist's marvellous documentary knowledge.

In the same group must be mentioned Phryne before the Tribunal (1861, reëxhibited in 1867), of charming subtlety, but with a little too much emphasis, perhaps, on the irony of its psychology; and, of course, Socrates Seeking Alcibiades at the House of Aspasia, analogous in inspiration, and, as it happens, belonging to the same year; and lastly Daphnis and Chloe (1898).

PIERRE LAFITTE & CIE, PARIS

PLATE VI.—THE LAST PRAYER

(In a Private Collection, United States)

The amphitheatre is filled to overflowing with the crowd that has gathered to witness the martyrdom of the Christians. Around the vast circle, unhappy victims agonize upon the cross. In one corner of the arena, a group of men and women, condemned to die, confess their new faith in an ardent prayer, while from the opened subterraneous passage the ravenous beasts are advancing upon their human prey.

Italy also, with all her memories, furnished Gérôme with scenes of striking contrast, evoked from the vanished past, spectacles at once sumptuous and barbaric. He caught this atmosphere with rare felicity. Paestum (1851) commands attention because of its group of buffaloes, which the Goncourts praised for "their ponderous weight of head, the solidity of their huge bulk, the grouping of their attitudes, the shagginess of their coats, the prevailing sense of grateful coolness."

It is necessary to assign a place apart, in this series, for the Augustan Age, Birth of Christ (1855, Amiens Museum). In his own private opinion, confided to his cousin Timbal, Gérôme held that this enormous composition, measuring ten metres in length by seven in height, lacked inventiveness and originality. It is true that the artist's personality is not clearly revealed in this picture, which is a sort of vast commentary on a phrase by Bossuet, and indisputably draws its inspiration from the Apotheosis of Homer by Ingres. Nevertheless, no one can dispute its noble qualities, and to borrow a phrase from Théophile Gautier, its "high philosophic significance." Beside Augustus Caesar deified appears Rome, in the form of a woman, helmeted, armed with a buckler, and clad in a red chlamys; then Tiberius, standing on the right, then statesmen and poets, Caesar, Cleopatra, Anthony, Brutus, and Cassius grouped together; lastly the throng of all nations on their knees, admirably rendered. In the centre, relatively unimportant in this immense assemblage, are the Virgin Mary, the Infant Jesus, and St. Joseph, treated in a curious fashion, modelled on the manner of Giotto. "It is the chief ornament of the Amiens Museum," Gérôme would say jestingly; for he had largely lost respect for this prolonged and important effort which represented two years' work of a serious and diligent student of history.

The two flawless masterpieces of Gérôme, the eloquent interpreter of ancient Rome, are unquestionably his Ave Caesar, Morituri te Salutant (1859), purchased by Mathews, in which, in the presence of a bloated, overfed Vitellius, sitting pacifically in his imperial box, not far from the white Vestals, crowned with verbena, gladiators are fighting and dying in the circus, and Pollice Verso (1874) in which these same gladiators are represented, no longer as Roman soldiers, but in the exact costume that they wear at the moment when the Emperor and the crowd, ravenous for carnage, turn down their thumbs as signal for the death stroke. This work, published by Goupil, did not appear at the Salon. We must cite further Gaius Maximus, the Chariot Race, which aroused legitimate enthusiasm in America; The Wild Beasts Entering the Arena (1902) and we must not forget that Gérôme also expended his energy as a sculptor upon these same attractive gladiatorial figures.

Striking and pathetic contrast is also earnestly striven for and strongly rendered in The Death of Caesar (1859, 1867). One almost needs to be an incomparable "stage manager" in order to show the body of Caesar after this fashion, in the foreground, in the chamber deserted by the Senators; one Conscript Father, as a touch of satire, has fallen asleep. The effect is powerful, even though it has been sought for with too obvious care. Undoubtedly Nadar had the laugh on his side when he compared the body of Caesar to a bundle of linen and called the picture "The Day of the Washerwoman." Gérôme appreciated the humour of this pleasantry. It is equally true that Baudelaire applauded the picture, exclaiming: "Certainly this time M. Gérôme's imagination has outdone itself; it passed through a fortunate crisis when it conceived of Caesar alone, stretched upon the ground before his overturned throne … this terrible epitome tells everything."

The clever erudition of the painter, who had already revealed himself as an adherent of the so-called group of "Pompeiians," in the Gyneceum (1850),—in which we perceive a group of nude women in the court of a house in Herculaneum,—asserts itself once more, coupled with an incisive touch of epigram in Two Augurs Unable to Look at Each Other Without Laughing, and similarly in the Cave Canem, now at Vesoul (in front of a Roman house a slave is playing the role of watch dog), in the Sale of Slaves at Rome (1884), etc.

A similar ingenuity, with greater amplitude, constitutes the charm and the surprise of Cleopatra and Caesar (1886). Cleopatra has had herself brought into Caesar's cabinet in the palace at Alexandria, concealed in a bundle of clothing. "Her appearance there," said Maxime du Camp, who also praised the interest of the accessories, treated with exquisite care, "is perfectly chaste, in spite of her nudity." All the details are executed with a masterly command of picturesqueness and accuracy.

As a religious painter Gérôme has to his credit the Virgin, Infant Jesus, and St. John (1848), a youthful work imitated from Perugino, a St. George, in the church of Saint-Georges at Vesoul, a St. Martin Cutting his Mantle, in the ancient refectory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, a Death of St. Jerome (1878) at Saint-Séverin, a Moses on Mt. Sinai, and The Plague at Marsailles, and, most important of all, Golgotha Consummatum Est, intensely lugubrious and symbolic in aspect, with Christ and the two thieves appearing, through the desolate atmosphere, like writhing shadows on the cross. This conception cost the author a violent diatribe from Veuillot, while Edmund About, although making certain reservations, wrote on the other side: "The entire sum of qualities that are distinctive of M. Gérôme will be found in this picture."

As a