Some have called the composition of this work poor and would wish other figures added, just as many spectators would like to have unnecessary characters introduced into plays simply for the pleasure of seeing a great number of new actors added to the scene. But to the particular taste of such persons the poets have never paid much attention. Also, some would like to find fault with that division of composition that we noted as a clever artifice. In our view, however, what we have said above is enough to convince one to the contrary. Some have also felt that it offends tradition to represent the act of an oath without an altar and without an image. The artist, however, thinking that the oath had been but an accessory request of the father, who began to speak to his sons while handing them their arms and in order to exhort them to the fight, did not believe it necessary to introduce either one. In regard to tradition a greater deficiency is to have depicted the three swords as being different one from another, and here desire for variety has made Signor David fall into this slight error.

In such a multitude of objections almost all are directed against the composition and not the observance of tradition. It is to the glory of a painter when one of his works is attacked only from these standpoints, because it is a sign that the eye has not been offended by the execution of the imitation, which is undeniably the principal part of the painting. To know how to create well and to compose a painting, ingenuity and fancy are enough; but then to express it and to execute the imagined concept hoc opus hic labor est.