The painted manifesto of academic Neoclassicism, commissioned by Charles X for
the ceiling of a room in the Louvre. Homer is crowned as the father of culture
inside a Greek temple, with poets, philosophers and artists from every period
gathered around him (Virgil, Dante, Raphael, Molière, Poussin) in a symmetrical
composition with a strict pecking order. Ingres painted it as a declaration:
classicism lasts forever and the great artists are its heirs. It still presides
over the Louvre.
