"The Plutarch of Painters."

Jean Leon Gerome, born at Vesoul, France, in 1824, won the title "Plutarch of Painters" by his masterly handling of classical subjects, especially his "Death of Caesar." Like Plutarch he places the scene of the assassination in the Curia of Pompey, rather than in the Senate Chamber. The architectural features resemble a Greek Theater. Pompey is said to have copied the theater of Mitylene in the building of his Curia in Rome. The statue of Pompey, "before which Caesar fell," is a copy of the supposed original in the Spada Palace, Rome. The white-robed conspirators are hastening to the exit, looking back only to shout aloud or to brandish their swords at the dead body of their victim. The tiers of seats are empty, the Senators having fled, with the exception of Publius, the old man "who could not move, being so overcome by the tragedy."

But the great merit of the picture, according to art-critics, is in the fore-shortening of the body of Caesar, as he lies with his head to the spectators, crowned with his golden wreath, wrapped in his toga as he fell, exclaiming: "Et tu, Brute!" The "Gladiators" also shows close classical study, by the drawing up of an awning in the rear, the much disputed method of covering the arena of the Coliseum to protect spectators from rain and sun. The weapons also correspond to those found by late archaeological research. The "Circus Maximus," "The Last Prayer of the Christian Martyrs," Father Joseph and many others add testimony to his Plutarchian pencil. But the picture which gave him a place among the leading painters of France was "The Age of Augustus and the Birth of Christ," exhibited at the French Salon of 1855, when Gerome was thirty-one years of age. This picture, of great size, grand in design and careful in execution, portrays the decline of Paganism and the rise of Christianity. It was purchased by the French Government, and procured for Gerome the Cross of the Legion of Honor.

Gerome was a pupil of Paul Delaroche. His first picture, painted in 1847, when he was twenty-four years of age, still hangs in the Luxembourg Gallery, Paris. A Greek boy and girl, life-size, kneeling on the ground, are trying with two tame roosters to incite a "Cock Fight," which is the name of the picture.

This earliest success gives the cue to his career as "a teller of tales" with the brush. His Egyptian and Oriental pictures tell many an anecdote and record many an ancient epigram in color. His "King of the Desert" gave him high rank as an animal painter.