Art: David's Admirers

Whatever inspiration they may have given him in life, women have been some thing of a cross to the fame of Jacques-Louis David, the painter-prophet of the French Revolution. Eleven years ago, Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art announced the unhappy fact that one of its most popular paintings — a portrait of a young woman, attributed to David and valued at some $100,000 — was not by David at all. The real artist was Constance Marie Charpentier, an obscure but obviously admiring David follower. Last week, David was in the news again. In the...