The topical interest of the _Raft of the Medusa_ had caused the public
to receive this picture with favour, in spite of its daring departure
from the generally accepted canons of the “grand style.” The case was
different when Delacroix showed at the Salon of 1822 the _Dante and
Virgil_ (No. 207, Plate XLVII.), which was inspired by Géricault’s
great picture, but applied that artist’s principles to a subject taken
from literature,—from Dante’s “Inferno,”—and was therefore considered
as a direct challenge to the academic host. To-day it is difficult to
understand the indignation aroused by the young artist, who became
forthwith the acknowledged head of the so-called Romanticist school,
although he refrained from taking part in any propaganda. In this,
his first important exhibited picture, he proved himself a true
painter in the sense in which Rubens was a painter—that is to say,
he no longer gave primary importance to drawing, with colour added
afterwards in the manner of a tinted cartoon. In the _Dante and Virgil_
colour and the actual sweep of the brush assumed at once a vital and
constructive function, no longer separable from drawing and design.
[Illustration:
PLATE XLVI.—JEAN LOUIS ANDRÉ THÉODORE GÉRICAULT
(1791-1824)