the
purity, and the severity of taste which had carried to the highest pitch
the art of the fifteenth century. The tradition of the masters in vogue
in Italy, of the Caracci, of Guido, of Paul Veronese, had reached Paris
with Simon Vouet, who had long lived at Rome. He was succeeded there by
a Frenchman "whom, from his grave and thoughtful air, you would have
taken for a father of Sorbonne," says M. Vitet in his charming _Vie de
Lesueur_: "his black eye beneath his thick eyebrow nevertheless flashed
forth a glance full of poesy and youth. His manner of living was not
less surprising than his personal appearance. He might be seen walking
in the streets of Rome, tablets in hand, hitting off by a stroke or two
of his pencil at one time the antique fragments he came upon, at another
the gestures, the attitudes, the faces of the persons who presented
themselves in his path. Sometimes, in the morning, he would sit on the
terrace of Trinity del Monte, beside another Frenchman five or six years
younger, but already known for rendering landscapes with such fidelity,
such, fresh and marvellous beauty, that all the Italian masters gave
place to him, and that, after two centuries, he has not yet met his
rival."

[Illustration: Lebrun----674]

"Of these two artists, the older evidently exercised over the other the
superiority which genius has over talent. The smallest hints of Le
Poussin were received by Claude Lorrain with deference and respect; and
yet, to judge from the prices at which they severally sold their
pictures, the landscape painter had for the time an indisputable
superiority."

Claude Gelee, called Lorrain, had fled when quite young from the shop of
the confectioner with whom his parents had placed him. He had found
means of getting to Rome; there he worked, there he lived, and there he
died, returning but once to France, in the height of his renown, for just
a few months, without even enriching his own land with any great number
of his works; nearly all, of them remained on foreign soil. Le Poussin,
born at the Andelys in 1593, made his way with great difficulty to Italy.
He was by that time thirty years old, and had no more desire than Claude
to return to France, where painting was with difficulty beginning to
obtain a standing. His reputation, however, had penetrated thither.
King Louis XIII. was growing weary of Simon Vouet's factitious lustre;
he wanted Le Poussin to go to Paris. The painter for a