nd artistic life in France before the 1789 revolution, and joined the intellectuals of his day in petitioning the new revolutionary government to abolish the old patronage system of art. This, in fact, would involve removing the French Royal Academy, and placing a group of experts, albeit with revolutionary sympathies, with the authority to redefine artistic temperament.3
David lived well past the revolution, and indeed was used by Napoleon to both glorify his dictatorship, and establish art to be "of . . . reason, to electrify the soul . . . and rise above the passions."4
2 Georges LeFebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974, 1989), 42 50.
3 Herbert De la Croix and Richard G. Tansey, eds., Gardner's Art Through the Ages, Vol. II. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 712 14.
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