two competing versions by Delpech and Sudré found eager buyers; Ingres received 24,000 francs for the reproduction rights – twenty times the amount he had been paid for the original painting six years earlier. The 1824 Salon also brought forward a counter-current to the neoclassicism of Ingres: Eugène Delacroix exhibited Les Massacres de Scio, in a romantic style sharply contrasting to that of Ingres. The success of Ingres's painting led in 1826 to a major new commission, The Apotheosis of Homer, a giant canvas which celebrated all the great artists of history, intended to decorate the ceiling of one of the halls of the Museum Charles X at the Louvre. Ingres was unable to finish the work in time for the 1827 Salon, but displayed the painting in grisaille. The 1827 Salon became a confrontation between the neoclassicism of Ingres's Apotheosis and a new manifesto of romanticism by Delacroix, The Death of Sardanapalus. Ingres joined the battle with enthusiasm; he called Delacroix "the apostle of ugliness" and told friends that he recognized "the talent, the honorable character and distinguished spirit" of Delacroix, but that "he has tendencies which I believe are dangerous and which I must push back." Despite the considerable patronage he enjoyed under the Bourbon government, Ingres welcomed the July Revolution of 1830. That the outcome of the Revolution was not a republic but a constitutional monarchy was satisfactory to the essentially conservative and pacifistic artist, who in a letter to a friend in August 1830 criticized agitators who "still want to soil and disturb the order and happiness of a freedom so gloriously, so divinely won." Ingres's career was little affected, and he continued to receive official commissions and honors under the July Monarchy. Ingres exhibited in the Salon of 1833, where his portrait of Louis-François Bertin (1832) was a particular success. The public found its realism spellbinding, although some of the critics declared its naturalism vulgar and its colouring drab. In 1834 he finished a large religious painting, The Martyrdom of Saint Symphorian, which depicted the first saint to be martyred in Gaul. The painting was commissioned in 1824 by the Ministry of the Interior for the Cathedral of Autun, and the iconography in the picture was specified by the bishop. Ingres conceived the painting as the summation of all of his work and skill, and worked on it for ten years before displaying it at