From historical personages as models (David) to the female nude (Ingres), to the male nude and horses (Géricault), the series presents an overlapping sequence in the history of European painting that was not yet modern art but was already wholly modern, or in other words, an aesthetic shift already taking place under the sign of the rise of the (industrial) bourgeoisie but had yet to know the effects on art of photography. The moral of this episode: don't ride horses.