masterpiece--"Dante and Virgil"--that he made his first appearance at
the Salon in 1822. At a bound he found himself famous. Guérin, who had
counselled him against sending his picture to the Salon, grudgingly
acknowledged that he was wrong. Gros told him that it was like Rubens,
with more correctness of form--Rubens "chastened" was the word. The
government bought the picture, paying the artist two hundred and forty
dollars--twelve hundred francs--for it.

The same year Delacroix submissively made his final attempt for the
Prix de Rome, but came out sixtieth in the competition. Thenceforward
he was to be constantly before the public, constantly opposed,
misunderstood, criticised; but nevertheless, with all the energy which
shows in his portrait, constantly in the front. When his defenders had
sufficient influence to force the hand of the ministry of fine arts,
he was commissioned to paint for the state; and to this we owe the
decorations in the gallery of Apollon in the Louvre, the decorations
in the church of St. Sulpice, and others. When he received the order
for the entrance of the Crusaders to Constantinople for the Gallery of
Battles at Versailles, the good King Louis Philippe sent him word to
make it as little like his usual style as possible!

Among Delacroix's critics Ingres, with all the force of his
convictions, was the foremost. He to whom a sky had always served as
a simple background was not created to understand the almost purple
canopy of azure stretching far above the heads of the Crusaders; nor
to find barbaric delight in the rich trappings of horses and men,
since to him a drapery was simply a textureless covering adjusted to
accentuate the form beneath. Delacroix, whose intelligence was of a
higher order and who said of himself that he was "more rebellious than
revolutionary," treated Ingres when they met on official occasions,