Different as they seem in technique, there are many points of contact between the visionary Gustave Moreau and _Puvis de Chavannes_, the original and fascinating creator of the decorative painting of the nineteenth century. Where one indulges in detail, the other resorts to simplification; where the former is opulent the latter is ascetic; and yet they are associated through inward sympathy.
Puvis de Chavannes is the Domenico Ghirlandajo of the nineteenth century. The most eminent mural works which have been achieved in France owe their existence to him. Wall-paintings from his hand may be found above the staircase of the museums of Amiens, Marseilles, and Lyons, in the Paris Panthéon and the new Sorbonne, in the town-halls of Poitiers and many other French towns--pictures which it is difficult to describe in detail, through the medium of pedestrian prose. The two works with which he opened the decorative series in the museum of Amiens in 1861 are entitled "Bellum" and "Concordia." In the former warriors are riding over a monotonous plain. Two smoking pillars, the gloomy witnesses to sorrow and devastation, cast their dark shadows over the still fields, whilst here and there burning mills rise into the sombre sky like torches. In "Concordia," the counterpart to this work, there are women plucking flowers, and naked youths urging on their horses amid a luxuriant grove of laurel. In the Paris Panthéon he painted, between 1876 and 1878, "The Girlhood of St. Geneviève." A laughing spring landscape, filled with the blitheness of May, spreads beneath the bright sky of the Isle de France. Calm figures move in it, men and women, children and greybeards. A bishop lays his hand upon the head of a young shepherdess; sailors are coming ashore from their barks. "The Grove sacred to the Arts and Muses" comes first in the decoration of the Lyons Museum. Upon one side is a thick forest, dark and profound, and upon the other the horizon is fringed by violet-blue hills and a large lake reflecting the bluish atmosphere; in the foreground are green meadows, where the flowers gleam like stars, and trees standing apart, oaks and firs, their strong, straight stems rising stiffly into the sky. At the foot of a pillared porch strange figures lie by the shore or stand erect amid the pale grass, one with her arm pointing upwards, another musing with her hand resting upon her chin, a third unrolling a parchment. Athletic youths are bringing flowers and winding garlands. The "Vision of Antiquity" and "Christian Inspiration" complete the series. The former of these pictures brings the spectator into Attica. Locked by a simple landscape of hills the blue sea is rippling, and bright islands rise from its bosom, while a clear sky sheds its full light from above. Trees and shrubs are growing here and there. A shepherd is playing upon the pan-pipes, goats are grazing, and five female figures, some of them nude, the others clothed, caress tame peacocks in the tall grass or lean against a parapet, breathing in the fresh, cool air. Farther back, at the foot of a height, is a young woman, holding herself erect like a statue, as she talks with a youth, whilst in the distance at the verge of the sea a spectral cavalcade, like that in Phidias' frieze of the Parthenon, gallops swiftly by. In the counterpart, "Christian Inspiration," a number of friars who are devoted to art are gathered together in the portico of an abbey church. The walls are embellished with naïve frescoes in the style of the Siennese school. One of the monks who is working on the pictures has alighted from the ladder and regards the result of his toil with a critical air. Lilies are blooming in a vase upon the ground. Outside, beyond the cloister wall, the flush of evening sheds its parting light over a lonely landscape, whence dark cypresses rise into the air, straight as a lance. In the decoration of the Sorbonne the object was to suggest all the lofty purposes to which the place has been dedicated upon the wall of the great amphitheatre used for the solemn sessions of the faculty, and facing the statues of the founders. Puvis de Chavannes did this by displaying a throne in a sacred grove, a throne upon which a grave matron arrayed in sombre garments is sitting in meditation. This is the old Sorbonne. Two genii at her side bring palm-branches and crowns as offerings in honour of the famous minds of the past. Around are standing manifold figures arrayed in the costumes which were assigned to the arts and sciences in Florence at the time of Botticelli and Filippino Lippi. From the rock upon which they are set there bursts the living spring from which youth derives knowledge and new power.