Art in Paris – Girodet at the Louvre
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Some art is so firmly anchored in a world unlike our own that it defies immediate comprehension. Imagine coming upon a picture of the Crucifixion without a road map through the history of Christianity. Who is that man, and why are those nails stuck in his hands? Is this the ultimate victory of the people who put in the nails or are we supposed to feel sympathy for the now dead victim? Abstract the image from our Christian context and it’s hard to know what to think. So it is that without a guide through the complex historical-political-social world of Anne Louis Girodet (1767-1824) you can easily get lost. With no prior knowledge you are forced to trust only your eyes. Unfortunately, in the case of Girodet, what your eyes tell you is not necessarily good enough.
Girodet is molded in the workshop of David, joining the atelier in 1785, the year that David exhibited the “Oath of the Horatiae” in the Salon. The “Oath” is the first image you see when you enter the exhibition galleries. As in so many Art History survey courses, David’s painting can serve as the very definition of Neo-classical painting in the late eighteenth century. The subject comes from an ancient text – historical or mythical. All the action is in the foreground of the picture and all movement is parallel to the picture plane. Emotions are noble and quietly expressed. Figures are ideal and their musculature carefully rendered with anatomical perfection. The colors are pure and primary, carefully balanced warm against cool.
When Girodet submitted his work for the coveted Prix de Rome, his subject was equally noble, “Joseph recognized by his brothers” from the Old Testament histories. He has learned his lessons well: a darkened stage-set interior pushes all the well-lit figures to the foreground; a series of gestures parallel to the picture plane serve to unite figure groups, predominant use of primary colors, expression of noble emotions in a subdued and refined manner. Competent and compliant, he gave the jury just what they wanted and off he went to Rome for four years, all expenses paid. He spent those four years absorbing antiquity at its source: the subjects, the archeology, the drama of the myths, and the alliances of the gods.
Perhaps it’s akin to a professor getting tenure and coming out, or a musician who signs a contract and dumps his band, but in Rome Girodet looses his compliant nature and sets out to find his own way. He begins to absorb Italian influences through the work of Michelangelo. Even before going to Rome, the Christ from the sculptor’s1498 “Pieta” can be seen in Girodet’s “Madonna and Christ” (1789).
His first painting in Rome, “The Sleep of Endymion” (1791), the debutant work that by tradition was sent back to France to show an artist’s progress, clearly demonstrates his. Endymion, half human – half god, is given eternal life through his liaison with Diana. Girodet’s canvas must have been shipped to Paris in a plain brown wrapper. To this viewer’s eyes it lacks the noble message of neo-classicism and relies instead on a soft-core depiction of an adolescent and a mature male that might make some more conservative viewers a little uncomfortable two hundred and fifteen years later. The voluptuous Diana is shown only as the light of divinity, a symbol of Christian spirituality. This is a giant step away from the irreligious secular art of his master. The sensual male nude was becoming an anomaly but Girodet exploits it for all it’s worth.
The intensity of his commitment to art is evident in his self-portrait at 28. He uses the heavy shadows of Caravaggio and the intense direct gaze of Rembrandt. Dressed in the white shirt of Revolutionary times he nonetheless wears a gentleman’s silk hat. His engaging glance disguises his close call at the hands of a Roman mob and his fearful flight to Naples, repeating the trajectory of Caravaggio some150 years earlier. Sick, unable to return to Rome, he landed in Genoa and finally returned to Paris in 1795.
Once back on native ground, his first commission involved an illustration based on a literary text by the mythical poet Ossian. An invention of a young contemporary Scott who claimed to have found the works that he dated to the third century CE, Ossian was beloved by the French. The spiritually imbued poems were an antidote to the rationalism of the Enlightenment and were the ideal foil for imaginative illustration. Girodet’s commission was loosely based on an Ossian idea meant to show the apotheosis of the French heroes who died during the war of Liberty (1801-02)
“The Apotheosis of the French heroes who died for the country during the war of Liberty” (1801) commissioned for Bonaparte to decorate Malmaison, is composed like a Last Judgment. However, in this image, nobody is excluded. The old good guys, the antique heroes of France, are on the left, bathed in the light of divine acceptance. The sky, above and below, is filled with the symbols of war and Empire. Swirling masses of female nudes (wingless Nikes?) proffer their support. The recently elected ascend from the right into the waiting arms of the prior dead. The right hand side of the canvas is filled with men in contemporary army uniforms, a group …
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Some art is so firmly anchored in a world unlike our own that it defies immediate comprehension. Imagine coming upon a picture of the Crucifixion without a road map through the history of Christianity. Who is that man, and why are those nails stuck in his hands? Is this the ultimate victory of the people who put in the nails or are we supposed to feel sympathy for the now dead victim? Abstract the image from our Christian context and it’s hard to know what to think. So it is that without a guide through the complex historical-political-social world of Anne Louis Girodet (1767-1824) you can easily get lost. With no prior knowledge you are forced to trust only your eyes. Unfortunately, in the case of Girodet, what your eyes tell you is not necessarily good enough.
Girodet is molded in the workshop of David, joining the atelier in 1785, the year that David exhibited the “Oath of the Horatiae” in the Salon. The “Oath” is the first image you see when you enter the exhibition galleries. As in so many Art History survey courses, David’s painting can serve as the very definition of Neo-classical painting in the late eighteenth century. The subject comes from an ancient text – historical or mythical. All the action is in the foreground of the picture and all movement is parallel to the picture plane. Emotions are noble and quietly expressed. Figures are ideal and their musculature carefully rendered with anatomical perfection. The colors are pure and primary, carefully balanced warm against cool.
When Girodet submitted his work for the coveted Prix de Rome, his subject was equally noble, “Joseph recognized
by his brothers” from the Old Testament histories. He has learned his lessons well: a darkened stage-set interior pushes all the well-lit figures to the foreground; a series of gestures parallel to the picture plane serve to unite figure groups, predominant use of primary colors, expression of noble emotions in a subdued and refined manner. Competent and compliant, he gave the jury just what they wanted and off he went to Rome for four years, all expenses paid. He spent those four years absorbing antiquity at its source: the subjects, the archeology, the drama of the myths, and the alliances of the gods.
by his brothers” from the Old Testament histories. He has learned his lessons well: a darkened stage-set interior pushes all the well-lit figures to the foreground; a series of gestures parallel to the picture plane serve to unite figure groups, predominant use of primary colors, expression of noble emotions in a subdued and refined manner. Competent and compliant, he gave the jury just what they wanted and off he went to Rome for four years, all expenses paid. He spent those four years absorbing antiquity at its source: the subjects, the archeology, the drama of the myths, and the alliances of the gods. Perhaps it’s akin to a professor getting tenure and coming out, or a musician who signs a contract and dumps his band, but in Rome Girodet looses his compliant nature and sets out to find his own way. He begins to absorb Italian influences through the work of Michelangelo. Even before going to Rome, the Christ from the sculptor’s1498 “Pieta” can be seen in Girodet’s “Madonna and Christ” (1789).
His first painting in Rome, “The Sleep of Endymion” (1791), the debutant work that by tradition was sent back to France to show an artist’s progress, clearly demonstrates his. Endymion, half human – half god, is given eternal life through his liaison with Diana. Girodet’s canvas must have been shipped to Paris in a plain brown wrapper. To this viewer’s eyes it lacks the noble message of neo-classicism and relies instead on a soft-core depiction of an adolescent and a mature male that might make some more conservative viewers a little uncomfortable two hundred and fifteen years later. The voluptuous Diana is shown only as the light of divinity, a symbol of Christian spirituality. This is a giant step away from the irreligious secular art of his master. The sensual male nude was becoming an anomaly but Girodet exploits it for all it’s worth.
The intensity of his commitment to art is evident in his self-portrait at 28. He uses the heavy shadows of Caravaggio and the intense direct gaze of Rembrandt. Dressed in the white shirt of Revolutionary times he nonetheless wears a gentleman’s silk hat. His engaging glance disguises his close call at the hands of a Roman mob and his fearful flight to Naples, repeating the trajectory of Caravaggio some150 years earlier. Sick, unable to return to Rome, he landed in Genoa and finally returned to Paris in 1795.
Once back on native ground, his first commission involved an illustration based on a literary text by the mythical poet Ossian. An invention of a young contemporary Scott who claimed to have found the works that he dated to the third century CE, Ossian was beloved by the French. The spiritually imbued poems were an antidote to the rationalism of the Enlightenment and were the ideal foil for imaginative illustration. Girodet’s commission was loosely based on an Ossian idea meant to show the apotheosis of the French heroes who died during the war of Liberty (1801-02)
“The Apotheosis of the French heroes who died for the country during the war of Liberty” (1801) commissioned for Bonaparte to decorate Malmaison, is composed like a Last Judgment. However, in this image, nobody is excluded. The old good guys, the antique heroes of France, are on the left, bathed in the light of divine acceptance. The sky, above and below, is filled with the symbols of war and Empire. Swirling masses of female nudes (wingless Nikes?) proffer their support. The recently elected ascend from the right into the waiting arms of the prior dead. The right hand side of the canvas is filled with men in contemporary army uniforms, a group portrait of a guard of honor in the best Dutch tradition. We can imagine that this was meaningful to Bonaparte but we don’t know these people. Their portraits, combined with the generic faces in the foreground are, by our standards, unimportant at best and insipid in the extreme. It seems to be a parody but it’s dead serious. How can we possibly understand Bonaparte’s need for validation?
Perhaps it’s easier to understand Girodet’s fit of peak during the Salon of 1799 when he removed his portrait of Mlle. Lange at her request. He not only removed it, he destroyed it and handed her the pieces. The painting that hangs here is his second portrait to replace the first. This is called “The Modern Danae”, a picture of the woman seduced by a shower of gold as described in ancient mythology. Unlike the “Apotheosis”, this is meant to be a parody, done with malice of fore thought. This is just plain nasty. The painting is so perfectly executed, how could you know? Someone would need to tell you that the young woman, still a portrait of Mlle. Lange, had married a rich older banker – hence the gold coins. The semi-nude woman, painted in profile, looks like so many of the women on ancient Greek vases. They hold mirrors to entrap their souls. She holds a mirror to symbolize her vanity. But, once again, how would you know? The public in 1799 knew that the turkey looked like her husband and the mask looked like her lover. They knew enough to create a scandal from which the “lady” never recovered. The painter did.
Girodet had one of the most successful careers of any French painter at the turn of the nineteenth century. He plugged into the sentimentality, the emotionality, and the political enormity of the era. When he painted a commission for the Tuileries Palace, “The Revolt of Cairo” (1810), the huge canvas that hangs at the entrance to the exhibition, he believed in Napoleon and in the Empire. He could make his figures heroic because that was how he saw them. Later in the exhibition, we can see only a few of the many preparatory drawings for this picture. Nonetheless, it is fascinating to note how a neo-classical artist worked to compose and to assemble the figures for a large-scale multi-figured composition of this nature. He was a brilliant draftsman and it comes through in his studies for this work.
In 1808 he painted a picture in the style of the neo-classicist that he is, with the sentiments of the Romantic he unwittingly has become. “Atala in the Tomb” illustrates a story from the writings of Chateaubriand, capturing a new emotionalism. This spirit of Romanticism is exemplified by the concept of an impossible love imbued with the Christian spirit. The savage Indian, ennobled by his love for a Christian virgin, holds fast to her lifeless body as it is lowered into the grave. The intensity of his emotion, the purity of the virgin, the sacred role of the monk dedicated to his faith, all intensify the emotionalism central to Romanticism. Already latent in “Endymion” in 1791, Girodet now crosses an invisible line into sentimentality.
If many viewers cannot follow him into this sentimental narrative, his final “masterpiece”, “Pygmalion and Galatea” accepted for the Salon in 1819, is even more difficult in this respect. Pygmalion is a story that is meant to demonstrate the power of art to affect the human soul, a conceit central to Romanticism. The idea is that love, artistic love, can move marble to flesh. Girodet’s picture contains all the appropriate formulae: a man in classical garb, a nude young woman, a winged child who plays Amor, some classical architecture to set the stage. All the emotion is concentrated in Pygmalion’s gesture and his glance. But he looks like such a simpering dolt that we cannot believe in him. When Galatea finally looks up we just know she’s going to be horrified. He is not the man of her dreams even if she is the woman of his. It is here that lies the weakness of this show. Girodet cannot overcome our modern need for reality. It is too difficult to believe in the emotional, near-to-simpering, over-charged hysterical figures that populate his history painting.
As the basic organization of this show is chronological it is towards the end of the exhibition that we find the greatest concentration of portrait painting. Always a prolific portraitist, Girodet was constantly in demand. Of course the commission for thirty-six full- length portraits of Napoleon only could add to his stature. Even his supposed disenchantment with Bonaparte and with the Empire did not decrease the demand for his services. He painted Bourbon military heroes, writers, family members, and beautiful women of all political stripes. His edges soften and his shadows deepen in his portraits of the men. Costume is more important in the portraits of women and the light is more evenly dispersed so that we can see the sumptuous satin and silk fabrics. The more even light is also kinder to the faces of the women.
Twenty-five years after winning the Prix de Rome, Girodet is represented in the Salon by fifteen works, an abbreviated retrospective of his work in Paris. A decade later, he’s dead and then, for years, forgotten. Girodet is important to us because he carries us over the threshold of the nineteenth century, because his work tries to reconcile the rational mind of the Enlightenment and the turbulent emotions of the new century. More interested in literature for his inspiration, nineteenth-century art will leave Girodet behind as it becomes more obsessed with contemporary events than with antiquity. In the end it must be said that Girodet’s work exemplifies the Salon. But then, the aesthetics of the early twenty-first century are unkind to Salon painters.
Exhibition: Girodet (1767-1824) at the Louvre until 2 January 2006 Metro: Palais Royal-Musée du Louvre, Every day, 9h00-15h30, Wed and Fri to 21h30; closed Tuesdays.
Deb Markow’s web site is www.artalks.com
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