The unprepared visitor of the Orsay Museum in Paris usually receives a more or less pleasant shock upon finding in the hall of the symbolists the enormous painting The School of Plato. It is a scene that is at once serene and sensual, reflective and brazen, enigmatic yet very direct A Plato that appears very similar to Jesus speaks to twelve disciples who, fortunately, seem nothing like the apostles. Is this a merciful blasphemy or simply a whim? The painting was made in 1898 by a relatively unknown Belgian symbolist, Jean Delville, who was a very curious man, a fanatic of idealism in artistic representation and friend of figures halfway between necromancy and Dandyism, such as Villiers de I'Isle Adam or Sâr Peladan. Perhaps he was trying to reunite the Greek and Christian traditions in this image