Prud'hon

Against Impressionism, as against Romanticism, only one artist had dared to continue the tradition of classical, decorative painting descending from Giotto, through Raphael and Poussin, to Prud'hon and to Ingres.

Nor did Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, a favorite artist of Josephine Bonaparte, ever surpass, in intimacy, his chalk portrait of his lover Constance Mayer, who eventually killed herself out of fear he would leave her.

It bore some resemblance, perhaps, to that of painters like Prud'hon or Ary Scheffer, but it had more vitality, and on the whole more power.

Prud'hon, in a Crucifixion scene, hides the face of the Magdalene in her hands, and Kaulbach in his Marguerite so bends her head that her face is completely concealed from the observer.

A similar scheme is successfully managed in Prud'hon's Abduction of Psyche.