Excerpt from Stories of the French Artists From Clouet to Delacroix<br><br>IN no country, perhaps, has art reflected the life and character of the nation to the extent that it has done in France, from which it follows that French art can never, except in certain of its phases, be so universally acceptable as that of Italy. And this because Italian art had a world-wide message to deliver, a message which has moulded thought and custom, and has done more to shape the destiny of modern art and thought than any other since that of the Greeks. A full-blooded and masculine art, whose fol lowers were not afraid to invade the highest realms of religious idealism and symbolism, and yet could grasp, as many of the Venetians did, the stern facts of materialism, was destined to.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.