WHEN plans to adapt the Galerie du Louvre for the display of paintings were agreed in 1782, it was soon realised that it would have to be illuminated from above. However, it was not until the Republic had been established that it fell to Hubert Robert, who had been curator of the King's paintings, to produce a project in which part of the roof vault was to be replaced by skylights. Galleries specifically designed for the display of paintings came to the fore in the first half of the nineteenth century. Side lighting having the obvious disadvantages of limiting hanging space and of unwanted reflections, a number of designs for top and clerestory lighting were adopted. Some like Sir John Soane's Dulwich Picture Gallery, completed in 1814 and Leo von Klenze's Alte Pinakothek of 1832 have remained virtually unchanged to this day. Private collectors also built such picture galleries and Waagen writes in 1857 of Lord Normanton's newly built gallery at Somerley that 'the lighting from above is so happily calculated that every picture receives a clear and gentle light'.

PRUD'HON was in Rome from early January 1785 to the autumn of 1788. During this time he consolidated his knowledge of the principles of classical art, which he had learned from his teacher in Dijon, Francois Devosge. This period is often passed over rather rapidly, as a time when he produced the required copy of Pietro da Cortona's Triumph of Religion from the ceiling in the Barberini Palace, but which he otherwise idled away, looking at the treasures of Rome, without actively working from them. It is perfectly true that, in comparison with the amount of work produced in Rome by David, Gros, Ingres or Flaxman, for example, Prud'hon's output is small. It is also true that Prud'hon himself encourages an impression of inertia and fainéantisme on his part. Only a few months after his arrival in Rome he wrote to his friend Fauconnier along these lines.