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FIGURE POSE AND MOVEMENT IN
EARLY FRENCH ROCOCO PAINTING

By

Michael Hollowell Duffy

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of Art

1984

ABSTRACT

FIGURE POSE AND MOVEMENT IN
EARLY FRENCH ROCOCO PAINTING

By

Michael Hollowell Duffy

This study examines how early French rococo painters applied
the contemporary eighteenth-century theoretical interest in figural
expression to their design of the figure pose. It first defines this
theoretical interest in representing the passions of the soul and then
looks for evidence of early rococo painted figures who are momentarily
preoccupied with strong ascending passions that appear to trap the
individual between two emotional and physical states. To demonstrate
that this interest in mixed passions and the preoccupied figure was
particularly tied to the early rococo style of French court paintings,
I contrast a sample of classical baroque paintings by Jean Jouvenet to
a corresponding number of rococo works by Charles de La Fosse, Antoine
Coypel, Noel Coypel and Francois de Troy. The early rococo emphasis
upon intrigue and irresolution was continued through the art of

Francois Boucher to the end of the rococo literary and artistic period.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the members of my thesis committee for
the interest that they took in this study and for the time and effort
that they spent in reading the thesis and in preparing for my defense.
I would like to personally thank Dr. Webster Smith and Dr. Molly Smith
for the continued interest that they showed in the thesis topic and
for the encouragement that they gave me in the final months of prepara-
tion. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to Dr. Eldon Van Liere,
whose seminar brought about my initial interest in some of the issues
that I explore in the thesis. I would also like to thank Dr. Van Liere
for the interest that he showed in my investigations and for his many
insights, helpful suggestions and the considerable time that he spent

in reading and commenting upon the thesis drafts.

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES C O O C O O O O O 0
INTRODUCTION 0 O O O O O O O O O 0

Chapter
I. THE THEORETICAL BACKGROUND .
Introduction . . . . . . .

Early Background . . . . .
Eighteenth-Century Interest

in Spectator Empathy . . . . .

II. INTIMACY AND UNCERTAINTY IN EARLY

ROCOCO DEPICTIONS 0F DRAMA o

The Fainting of Esther . .
The Sacrifice of Iphigenia

III. FIGURE MOVEMENT AND POSE . o

The Figure in Transition .
The Action of Uncertainty
IV. CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . .

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . .

iii

iv

111»

1h
16

36

a?

47
58

67

67
88

112

114

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

1. Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael. Judgment of
Paris. EngraVing’ C. 1510. O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 20

 

2. Annibale Carracci. Jupiter and Juno. Fresco,
C. 1601-8 0 O O O O O O C O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 25

 

3. Tiziano Vecelli. Venus and Adonis. Oil on
canvas, 1554. O O O O O O O C O O I O I O O O O O O O O O 27

 

4. Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael. Massacre of
the Innocents. Engraving, c. 1510. . . . . . . . . . . . 29

 

5. Peter Paul Rubens. Judgment of Paris. Oil on
WOOd, Co 1632-5 0 o o o o e o e o e o e e o o o o e o o o 32

 

6. Peter Paul Rubens. Descent from the Cross.
Oil on canvas, C. 1615. O O O I O O O O O O O O O O O O O 31‘

 

7. Peter Paul Rubens. Saint George. Oil on canvas,
1629. O O O O C O O O O O C O O O O C O O O O O O O O I O 35

 

8. Jean Jouvenet. Fainting of Esther before
Asahuerus. Oil on canvas, 1674 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

 

9. Nicholas Poussin. Esther before Asahuerus.
Oil on canvas, c. 1655. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

10. Antoine Coypel. Esther before Asahuerus. Oil
on canvas, 1704 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

 

11. Jean-Francois de Troy. Fainting of Esther.
Oil on canvas, 1737 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

 

12. Charles de La Fosse. Sacrifice of Iphigenia.
Oil on canvas, C. 1682. O O O O O C C O C O O O 0 O O O O 59

 

13. Jean Jouvenet. Sacrifice of Iphigenia. Oil
on canvas, Co 1675-85 a o o o o o o e o o o o o o o o o o 60

 

14. Noel Coypel. Apollo Crowned by Victory. Oil
on canvas, c. 1696. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

iv

Figure Page

15. Noel Coypel. Apollo Crowned by Victory. Oil
on canvas, c. 1704. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

 

16. Antonio Allegri da Correggio. Assumption of
the Virgin. Fresco, c. 1526-30 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

 

17. Antonio Allegri da Correggio. Ascension of
Christ. FreSCO, Co 1520-24 a o o e e o o e o o e o o o o 77

 

18. Jean Jouvenet. Apollo and Thetys. Oil on
canvas ’ C O 1700 O O O I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 78

 

19. Antoine Coypel. Zephyr and Flora. Oil on
canvas , C. 1702 O O C C O O O C O O O O O O O O O O O O O 79

 

20. Michel Corneille. Judgment of Midas. Oil
On canvas, Co 1701-06 0 e o o e o o o o o o o e o o o o o 81

 

21. Louis de Sylvestre. Arion on the Dolphin.
Oil on canvas, c. 1702. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

 

22. Francois Boucher. Arion Carried on a Dolphin.
Oil on canvas, 1749 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

 

23. Antoine Coypel. Assembly of the Gods. Oil
on canvas, c. 1702. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

 

24. Noel Coypel. Hercules, Dejanira and the
Wounded Centaug, Nessus. Oil on canvas,
C. 1700 O O O O O O O O O O O O O C C C O O O O O O O O O 95

 

 

25. Antoine Coypel. Hector Bidding Andromache
Farewell. Oil on canvas, c. 1708 . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

 

26. Nicholas Bertin. Vertumnus and Pomona. Oil
on canvas ’ C O 1706 O O O O O O O O C O C O O O O O O O O O 99

 

27. Antoine Watteau. Vertumnus and Pomona. Oil
on canvas, c. 1714. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

 

28. Francois Boucher. Vertumnus and Pomona. Oil
on canvas , C O 1749 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O I O 103

 

29. Francois Boucher. Vertumnus and Pomona. Oil
on canvas, 1758 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

 

30. Francois Boucher. Vertumnus and Pomona. Oil
on canvas, 1763 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

 

INTRODUCTION

This paper will look at a sample of the earliest paintings
produced in the French rococo style and demonstrate how they departed
from the classical style of Charles LeBrun's school in their sympa-
thetic rendering of the principal figure's pose. I shall focus on
the tendency of these paintings to portray centralized figures who
appear to be caught between successive stages of a single action.
Principal figures are often actively involved in a weight shift that
leaves their balance in doubt or up to the conjecture of the specta—
tor. Accessory figures frequently express surprise, intrigue and
sympathy to indicate for the spectator how a recent turn of events
has cost the main figure considerable emotional and physical effort.

After the middle of the eighteenth century, French art
critics looked unfavorably upon the continued rococo practice of
combining different stages of action in a single figure pose and of
suggesting an indecisive pause in the action of the main figure.
Denis Diderot, Friedrich Grimm, Jean—Pierre Mariette, the Comte de
Caylus and other men of letters of the mid-eighteenth century often
characterized rococo figures as pretentious, artificial and confus—
ing.1 Yet, these writers called upon painters to depict mixed
passions and a sense of deep reflection in their principal figures:
interests which had their origin in rococo art theory and practice.

There has been a recent trend to accept the art criticism of

Diderot, Grimm and other writers hostile to the rococo as an adequate

evaluation of rococo art and to incorrectly give these writers credit
for producing the first widespread literary and artistic interest in
mixed passions and the self-engrossed figure. Michael Fried and

John Wilson support this opinion and have largely credited Jean—
Baptiste Greuze, Joseph-Marie Vien, Jacques-Louis David and other
middle and later eighteenth-century painters with the first practical
illustration of these interests.2 Vladyslav Folkierski and John
Wilson have recognized that during the first half of the eighteenth
century the rococo aestheticians Anthony Cooper and Jean-Baptiste

DuBos as well as the Academy conférenciers Louis Tocqué and the Comte

 

de Caylus were somewhat interested in the spontaneity and unfolding
drama of mixed passions.3 Nevertheless, there is no art-historical
literature to date which specifically attempts to draw a connection
between rococo art theory and practice during the early eighteenth
century.

This study will try to show that early rococo painters did
attempt to apply contemporary eighteenth-century theoretical interest
in figural expression to their design of the figure pose. It will
set out to prove that the earliest painters in the rococo style and
two generations of their followers actually promoted and kept alive
the artistic interests in mixed passions and the self-engrossed
figure. I will largely focus on individual paintings of Charles de
La Fosse, Noel Coypel, Antoine Coypel and Nicholas Bertin and attempt
to relate the rococo theoretical interests in continuous figural

movement and intrigue to the practice of the painter.

The first chapter will show that this new interest in mixed
passions and figure movement conformed to the climate of opinion of
the time among theorists of art regarding the subject of figural
expression. The French Academy of Painting and Sculpture in the
last quarter of the seventeenth century urged that young painters
combine LeBrun's facial characterizations of the passions with the
official Academy notion that the painter had to inform and edify the
spectator with character types that were drawn from the ancient
poets and the Scriptures. During the 1670's, André Félibien and
Roger de Piles deviated from official Academy doctrine when they
extended their discussion of the passions to include convincing
physicial evidence of the passions' emotional cost to the principal
figure of the painting. They discussed how the figure could display
many unintentional physical marks and gestures when it passed through
different passions. This inadvertent display of anxiety and the
figure's dramatic response to a recognizable source of affliction
would sympathetically touch the spectator and move him or her to
tears.

At the turn of the century, de Piles and Antoine Coypel
placed new emphasis upon the expressive quality of hands, head and
eyes to most effectively communicate the feelings of the figure to
the spectator. They reintroduced the humanist theory of imitation
as it had been explained earlier by Leon Battista Alberti, Leonardo
da Vinci and Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo. An accurate and imaginative
copy from nature of the physical effects of a passion of the soul

would, according to this theory, secretly move the spectator's own

soul with the same passions as if the painted event were actually
taking place. De Piles and Coypel counselled the painter to follow
actors and orators, who know how to express a feeling in order to
excite it in the audience.

The second chapter would demonstrate how certain paintings
by La Fosse and Antoine Coypel are rococo in feeling when they place
the central figure close to the spectator and impart a sense of
intimacy, intrigue and tenderness that is lacking in more sober and
majestic works by Jean Jouvenet on the same subject. Jouvenet's
classical baroque style contains a successful synthesis of the art
of Poussin and DeBrun. It exemplifies the kind of court art that was
particularly popular before the rococo style was favorably received
in France. To specifically illustrate how the pose and movement of
early rococo painted figures differed from those figures produced by
Jouvenet, I have chosen to contrast Jouvenet's Sacrifice of Iphigenia,

Esther before Asahuerus and Apollo and Thetis to La Fosse's Sacrifice

 

 

of Iphigenia and Antoine Coypel's Esther before Asahuerus and Zephyr

 

and Flora. The mythological and religious paintings of Jouvenet

 

incorporate Poussin's planar arrangement of figures and his interest
in sharp modelling, arrested action and carefully balanced movements.
Jouvenet's works also utilize LeBrun's strong diagonal arrangement

of figures, foreshortened objects in space, Chiaroscuro, lively
contrapposto and exaggerated expressions demonstrating the great
consequences of the central event. The early rococo paintings have
softer contours and have modified the baroque diagonal with a

circular arrangement of figures. They also substitute mixed gestures

and a certain imbalance in the figure poses for the arrested actions
and balanced poses found in Jouvenet's art.

The third chapter shows how the early rococo paintings of
the Coypels, La Fosse and Bertin display principal figures who may
actively move from a position of rest in the form of an extended and
graceful turn toward an object of great interest. Other paintings
portray contrapposto movements that bend the torso away from the
legs and the head away from the alignment of the shoulders in order
to denote indecision on the part of the figure. Early eighteenth-
century art theorists as de Piles, Cooper and DuBos felt that the
graceful turn or twisting torso suggests a figure's internal struggle
between conflicting passions and their anticipated outcomes. The
early rococo emphasis upon intrigue and irresolution was carried on
in the paintings of Antoine Watteau, Jean-Francois de Troy and
Francois Boucher.

I shall also discuss briefly the role that the late
seventeenth—century French aristocratic code of honnéte behavior had
upon the creation of the lively rococo figure pose. In early rococo
paintings, main figures are frequently charmed into a state of
uncertain pleasure by a galant partner who, through a process of
courteous self-effacement, flattery and easy accommodation, insinu-
ates his or her way into the heart of the other person. The magnetic
charm of the honnete male or précieux female is unforeseen and only
gradually reveals its beautiful traits as it attracts the attention
of an admirer. Antoine Coypel in the 1700's as well as Antoine Pater

and Francois de Troy, a generation later, emphatically represented

this je ne sais quoi, or inexpressive something, as a surprise that

 

accompanied expressions of fear or shame. By the 1740's and 1750's,
Francois Boucher downplayed the element of surprise for the notion

of delicatesse, which emphasized the innocent pleasures that were

 

subject to the law of reason. The quiet savoring of these pleasures
in the intimate presence of a mutual friend was a necessary prelude
to a successful love affair.

The French rococo style of painting first appeared on a
regular basis in the late 1690's amid the new building program
inaugurated under Jules Hardouin-Mansart as Surintendant des
Batiments. This program began with the remodelling of the small
Chateaux degplaisance at Trianon and at the Menagerie stables at
Versailles in 1698. The subsequent interior decorations for the
royal mansions at Meudon, Versailles, Marly and Trianon from 1699
until 1702 began to promote to a considerable extent the linear,
playful and airy wall designs of the current Dessinateur des Bati—
mggtg, Pierre Lepautre, whose style soon came to be associated with
the "rocaille" decorative style of the Regency and the reign of
Louis XV.4 To the tall mirrors, raised cornices and curvilinear
scrollwork that ambiguously flowed in three-dimensional space were
added the exquisite arabesques of Jean Berain with their emphasis
upon shells, tendrils and sprays.5

Just as this new rococo feeling for playful and minute forms
was being preferred at court over the earlier geometric, grand and
corporeal scheme of Charles LeBrun and Pierre Lassurance, so then the

royal commissions for paintings in these newly remodelled apartments

were largely going to young artists who worked in the graceful,
delicate and curvilinear late style of La Fosse, Noel Coypel and
Louis de Boullogne the Younger. The very ordered, austere and
extended composition of Charles LeBrun and his pupils was now more
narrowly appreciated at court for its noble presentation of religious
subjects.6 The majority of secular history paintings made for the
royal residences at Trianon, Meudon, Paris and in the Versailles
countryside from 1698 until 1710 depicted youthful figures who were
engaged in either delicate and amorous encounters or distracted by
musical performances. These paintings frequently portrayed the
intimacy of few figures who closely interacted with one another in
the vicinity of the picture plane. The intricacy of delicate and
subtle hand and facial gestures and of body posture further created a
sense of intrigue and complexity that was similar to the sensation
produced in the spectator by the fanciful, delicate and busy ara—
besques that formed wall moldings and panel decorations within the
same room.

This sense of intrigue and ingenuity was in part a reflection
of the contemporary aristocratic code of honnete behavior which
stressed the ability of minute, delicate and circuitous actions to
bring inexpressible pleasure and charm to a polite audience of specta-
tors. Pleasure and captivation were the expected product of honnéte
behavior when practiced by persons of quality and honor. Through the
practice of easy self—control, urbanity and eloquent accommodation,
the honnéte homme could expect to move freely within upper-class

. . . 4 I .
Circles and bring honor to one's family name. Honnetete acquired a

refined galant style after Rene Le Pays, Antoine Méré, the Chevalier

Saint-Evremond and other littérateurs in the third quarter of the

 

seventeenth century formulated a new "galant" code of amatory behavior
that replaced the previous "tender" system of courtly love. The
playful air, savoir-faire and lightness of the galant gentleman and
his précieux female counterpart largely modified the prowess, discre-
tion and devotional practices of feudal courtly love.7 Near the end
of the century, the air galant was extended to the behavior of polite
society at large. Méré, La Bruyere and other writers emphasized in
the galant approach to honneteté the ability of the cultivated person
to totally win over others by enchanting and captivating them. The
process of winning over by attracting sympathy when humbly accommodat-
ing oneself to another was often described as seduction.8 By the

force of his presence and wit, the honnéte homme could "besiege",

 

"manage", "take hold" or "silently penetrate" the heart of the specta-
tor or addressee by the least imposing but most alluring movements of
the body.9 Georges de Scudery wrote that some of his contemporaries
viewed the art of pleasing, or honnéteté, as sorcery, deception or
magic.10 The galant style of honnéteté made use of subtle, delicate
and exquisite manners,11 which were disengaging12 and appeared to

cost little to produce.13

The terms insinuation and inclination described the noteworthy

 

effects that honneteté had upon the addressee. The honnéte homme

 

drew the inclination of another toward himself by way of pleasing and
indirect insinuations which ". . . wind their way into the heart of

the captivated individual."14 The resulting pleasures experienced

were tentative and ambiguous. These pleasures ". . . would confound

the highest wisdom."15

It was believed that a single object or effect of pleasure
could not hold the soul since it would quickly cause boredom.16 For
the mind to be preoccupied, it had to perceive a complexity of sensa-
tions.17 As with Méré and other promoters of honnéteté, the painter
Antoine Coypel believed that excitement was generated by a thing
which had a mixed complexion. Part of the painter's difficulty lay
in depicting this confused state, especially where the passions were
concerned. To satisfactorily represent love, for example, the artist
had to display the avidity of pleasures and the aggressiveness of
desires together with traits of sadness or fear, which produced
inquietude and introspection.18 Coypel wrote that the heart frequent-
ly lapsed into self-abandonment when the passion of love had conquered
an enchanted person and allowed that person to be given into the
impetuous desires caused by the object of esteem:

In effect, nothing could appear comparable in nature

to the object which enchants us. The heart, always

ingenious to be mistaken, finds false pretexts to

weaken itself and refuses to understand the trouble—

some voice of reason, in order to abandon itself to

the impetuous desires that the adored object often

causes, even in the heart of the wisest. . . .19
Coypel lamented that the ability of one to rationalize about current
amatory sensations was often reduced by the deceptively swift growth

. 20

of the paSSion of love.

From the time of its inception in the late style of Charles de

La Fosse, rococo painting very often displayed an interest in depict-

ing impassioned principal figures who struggle to understand or take

10

control of the irresponsible impulses of their passions by turning
them inward. Painters depicted the cost to the figure of this intro-
spection. The ambiguous and mixed nature of the figure's feelings
was displayed by open and closed arm gestures as well as by con-
trapposto movements of legs, torso and head. The second chapter
explores how this interest in‘gentle and ambiguous reflection upon
the sensations developed with the early rococo style of La Fosse, the
Coypels and Louis de Boullogne. The third chapter shows how lively
body movement often mirrored the conflict between a figure's initial

impulses and its interiorization and reflection upon these sensations.

INTRODUCTION: NOTES

1See John M. Wilson, The Painting of the Passions in Theory,
Practice and Criticism in Later Eighteenth Century France, (New York:
Garland Publishing, Inc., 1981), pp. 66-7, 71, 118; Michael Fried,
Absorption and Theatricality. Painting and Beholder in the Age of
Diderot, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 35-41,
82-90; Philippe de Chennevieres and Anatole de Montaiglon, Abecedario
de P. J. Mariette, IV, Archives de l'art francais-document, (Paris:
J. B. Dumoulin, 1853—1854), pp. 31-6.

2Both John Wilson and Michael Fried believe that rococo facial
expressions and attitudes fail to make the central action of a paint-
ing intelligible and compelling to the spectator. Diderot found
rococo figures to be too pretentious in their poses and too independ-
ent of the principal event in the painting. Michael Levey also noted
that, internationally, rococo painted figures are very often too
languorous or contrived in their attitudes to form a well-integrated
event. Wilson, The Painting of the Passions, pp. 66-7; Fried,
Absorption and Theatricality, pp. 35, 79, 83; Michael Levey, Rococo
to Revolution. Eighteenth-Century Painting, (New York: Frederick A.
Praeger, Publishers, 1966), pp. 25, 31-2, 37.

 

 

3Vladyslav Folkierski, Entre 1e Classicisme et le Romantisme,
Etude sur l'esthétique et les esthéticiens du XVIIIe Siecle, (Paris:
Edouard Champion, 1925), pp. 172-3; Wilson, The Painting of the
Passions, pp. 34, 39.

4Sidney Fiske Kimball, The Creation of the Rococo, (Philadel-
phia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1943), p. 4.

SIbido, pp. 62’ 66-70

6See Louis Hourticq, De Poussin a Watteau, (Paris: Librairie
Hachette, 1921), pp. 240-44; and Antoine Schnapper, Tableaux pour le
Trianon de marbre, 1688-1714, (Paris: Moutin, 1967), p. 38.

7Jean-Michel Pelous, Amour précieux, amour galant (1654-1675),
(Paris: Librairie Klincksieck, 1980), pp. 195-224.

 

8Pelous, Amour précieux, pp. 208, 211; Domna C. Stanton, The
Aristocrat as Art. A Study of the Honnéte Homme and the Dandy in
Seventeenth- and Nineteenth-Century French Literature, (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1980), p. 64.

9Stanton, The Aristocrat as Art, pp. 64, 65, 235.

101bid., pp. 120-1, 246-7.

 

11

12

lllbid., pp. 121, 124.
12Ibid., p. 125.
131pm.

14

Ibid., p. 121.

15"I1 me semble que dans le dessein de se rendre honnéte
homme et d'en acquérir la reputation le plus important consiste a
connaitre en toutes les choses les meilleurs moyens de plaire et de
les savoir pratiquer." "L'un avait toute sorte d'agréments . . . et
i1 semblait avoir dans son naturel, de quoi plaire a tous les hommes.
L'autre avait tant de belles qualités qu'il pouvait s'assurer d'avoir
de l'approbation dans tous les lieux ou l'on fait quelque cas de la
virtu. Le premier . . . ne manquait jamais de s'attirer les inclina-
tions. Le second avait quelque fierté, mais on ne pouvait pas lui
refuser son estime. Pour achever cette différence, on se rendait avec
plaisir aux insinuations de celui-la, et on avait quelquefois du
chagrin de ne pouvoir resister a l'impression du mérite de celui-ci.
C'est un enchantement secret qui confrondrait la plus haute sagesse."

It seems to me that in the scheme of becoming an honnéte
homme and in acquiring a reputation by it, the most important fact
consists in knowing in all things the best means of pleasing and how
to practice it. The first has all kinds of agreements . . . and he
could appear to have in his person that pleasure which is in all men.
The other has such beautiful qualities that he could be assured of
finding approval in all the places where one displays virtue. The
first . . . never fails to draw toward himself inclinations. The
second has some aggression, but one could not refuse him esteem. To
accomplish that difference, one gives into the insinuations of the
former, and one sometimes has trouble in not being able to resist the
temptations of the latter. This is a secret enchantment that could
confuse the highest wisdom. This passage from Antoine Méré's Lettres
is quoted in Stanton, The Aristocrat as Art, p. 246.

16Ibid., p. 247, footnote 31.

17See Montesquieu's article on taste written for Diderot's
Encyclopedia in 1753. Encyclopedia Selections. Diderot, D'Alembert,
and a Society of Men of Letters, trans. Nelly Hoyt and Thomas Cassirer,
(New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965), pp. 350-2; and Robert
Mauzi, L'idée du bonheur au XVIIIe siécle, (Paris: Librairie Armand
Colin, 1960), p. 396.

 

8Henri Jouin, Conférences de l'Academie Royale de Peinture
et de Sculpture, (Paris: Quantin, 1883), p. 356.

 

13

19"En effet, rien ne parait comparable dans la nature a
l'objet qui nous enchante. Le coeur, toujours ingénieux a se
tromper, trouve de faux prétextes pour s'affaiblir lui-meme, et
refuse d'entendre la voix importune de la raison, pour s'abandoner
aux désirs impetueux que l'objet aimé fait naitre souvent, meme dans
1e coeurdes plus sages. . . ." Jouin, Conferences, p. 355.

20"La premiere blessure que l'amour fait naitre dans une éme
est presque incroyable; l'on se flatte quelquesfois que la raison
pourra la combattre, et c'est dans ce meme instant qu'il sait vaincre
et triomper sans meme qu'on s'en apercoive. . . ." Jouin, Conferences,
p. 355.

"The first wound that love causes to be born in a soul is
nearly incredible; one flatters himself that reason will combat it,
and it is in this same instant that it can conquer and triumph without
one even perceiving it. . . ." Jouin, Conferences, p. 355.

CHAPTER ONE

THE THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Introduction

Seventeenth-century French writers of art theory acquired
from Italian Renaissance theorists their belief that lively figure
movement and gesture were an important means of communication between
painting and spectator. Leon Battista Alberti's fifteenth-century
treatise on painting attempted to promote the ancient Roman precepts
that painting ought to morally instruct the spectator and that the
spectator can be made to feel as the painted figures do toward the
main event. Leonardo da Vinci, at the beginning of the sixteenth
century, extended Alberti's discussion of body movement into the area
of how figures can most effectively and naturally express their intent
as they interact with other objects or figures. In the 1580's,
Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo closely followed Leonardo in his assertion
that the painter ought to observe how passions are formed and
expressed in their true and natural environment. He further promoted
the idea that the imagination and invention of the painter were
essential in creating passions that will move spectators to the same
passion: an idea that would have a great effect on Roger de Piles

and rococo theorists as Antoine Coypel and Jean-Baptiste DuBos.

14

15

French connoisseurs, artists and academicians of the middle
seventeenth century revived Alberti's idea that the painter must
edify spectators with a learned narrative and found figural expres-
sions most important in narrating the stories of poets and Scriptural
authorities. They thought that the placement, attitudes and expres-
sions of subsidiary figures could most effectively demonstrate how
the spectator ought to react to illustrious heroes who experienced
diversity in the great events of history.

Charles LeBrun wrote a handbook on the physical facial
features of the eleven general passions of the soul outlined by the
French Rationalist philosopher, René Descartes. LeBrun's manual
emphasized that complex passions as love and hate were naturally
built up from simpler responses of attraction or repulsion that an
individual might have for a person or object. Influenced by LeBrun's
work, André Félibien wrote that a single figure could display past
and present passions when aroused by a single object. During the
late 1670's, Félibien and de Piles thought that mixed passions,
portrayed in one figure, could indicate the emotional cost to the
figure and the figure's proximity to the cause of its affliction.
After 1700, de Piles and Antoine Coypel carried further this empathic
quality of figural expression. They recalled Horace's remarks on the
true imitation of nature as well as the comments of Quintilian and

Leonardo on the rhetoric of gestures and posturing.

16

Early Background

Mid-seventeenth-century French writers of art theory acquired
from Italian Renaissance theorists their belief that lively figure
movement and gestures were an important means of communication between
painting and spectator. In his Della pittura, Alberti wrote that all
the figures of the dramatic and monumental istoria ought to move,
gesture and express feelings according to what is ordered in the
painting. All movements of the body should be directed toward
describing the event as narrated by the ancient poets and then toward
moving the spectator by the painter's ingenious depiction of the
passions of the figures represented. "Thus whatever the painted
persons do among themselves or with the beholder," wrote Alberti, "all
is pointed toward ornamenting or teaching the istoria."2 Horace, the
Roman poet of the first century B.C. and one of Alberti's important
sources for expression in painting, counselled poet and painter alike
to follow the ancient poets, like Homer, in their depiction of
characters. The artist should generally follow the promoters of
great legends who have appropriately developed through time the heroes
and victims who could serve to illustrate the good and bad in human
attributes.3

Alberti believed that the painter's interpretation of the
great event should be displayed with all the force necessary to
attract and move the spectator. Gestures and facial expressions

0

ought to display how figures are "disturbed souls,' stirred by the

action. The istoria would, in turn, move the soul of the spectator

". . . when each man painted there clearly shows the movement of his

17

own soul."4 "We weep with the weeping, laugh with the laughing and
grieve with the grieving."5 The movements of the soul that could
make the viewer participate in the emotions of the acting figures
were best displayed through movements of the body. All the motions
of the body should be closely observed from nature so that the painter
could capture the feeling of the person who was to look in and share
the participant's grief or pleasure, Leonardo wrote about hand and
arm motions that express the intent of a figure that is conversing
with others. According to Leonardo, the painter ought to follow the
practices of good orators in the tribunal who amplify for others the
force of their feelings by ornamenting their speech with hand and arm
gestures.11 The painter should eavesdrop on actual conversations in
order to determine what causes people to make certain gestures with
the hands.12 Leonardo repeated the advice given much earlier by
Quintilian on the delivery of the orator, when he encouraged painters
to visit deaf persons who have learned how to amplify and precisely
communicate their thoughts and desires.13

In the second book of his Trattato dell'arte della pittura of

 

1584, Lomazzo also called upon the painter to learn the physical
traits of particular human emotions from real life situations. The
painter was to closely observe the different ways that a particular
figure might express a certain feeling, such as dejection, courage or
desire.14 He could depict what the figure was thinking, but, like
the poet, needed a certain natural genius that had to be combined
with the desire to succeed and a direct inspiration for his art. The

expressive traits that were created first-hand would best affect the

18

spectator.15 The painter should study what physical motions are
caused by each passion that interests him and apply this knowledge to
the most sympathetic characterization of the illustrious hero and his
or her special attributes in order to move the spectator toward an
emotional involvement with the people depicted:

If one knew the complete story of Christ, he shall

gather up the true idea and method of how he ought

to represent the motions of Christ, the Apostles,

the Jews, and all the rest . . . so sufficiently

that the mind of the spectator be moved to pity,

tears and sorrow at the sight of the picture, than

men are usually, at the reading of the story.1
From the natural behavior of the living, the painter would best learn
how to reach the heart of his spectators.

Paul Fréart de Chambray, Nicholas Poussin and André Félibien,
who were early spokespersons for the French classical spirit that
prevailed in the conferences and teaching of the Royal Academy of
Painting and Sculpture in Paris, emphasized the ability of expressions
to narrate the great stories of the poets and of Scripture, and to
illustrate their teachings. In his Idée de la Perfection de la
Peinture, published first in 1662, Fréart de Chambray reserved an
important place for figural expression as the great communicator of
the painter's knowledge and the force of his feelings about his
subject. It was from the painter's application of judgment and
circumspection in the depiction of passions that spectators could
judge his worth and abilities. As Leonardo before him, Fréart wrote

that expressions gave to figures the ability to speak and to reason

with the spectator. "Expression not only discovers what every figure

19

does and speaks, but even what it thinks also, a thing almost
incredible."17
When discussing an engraving of Raphael's Judgment of Paris,
Fréart praised the painter for characterizing the passions of the
figures in a manner most appropriate to their roles that the ancient
poets had ascribed to them. In Raphael's Judgment of Paris (Figure 1),
the figure of Minerva showed disdain, while that of Venus gracefully
revealed a certain secret and bashful complacency that was appropriate

' wrote Fréart, "she is sufficiently con-

to beauty. "As for Juno,’
spicuous, according to the poets' description of her, full of anger,
revenge and arrogance."18 Mercury's posture and his intent to speak
and move forward simultaneously suited his guileless and diligent

character and how well he was chosen for his task here.19 In the

engraving of Raphael's Descent from the Cross, Fréart similarly

 

remarked how it would be impossible to better imagine the devotion in
Joseph of Arimathea, love in Saint John, grief in the Virgin and
melancholy in the landscape. Fréart promoted Alberti's idea that
figural expression was important in narrating the great stories of
the past and in moving the spectator, himself, to identify with the
virtues that were revealed in such times of adversity.

When Poussin wrote to Fréart de Chambray's brother, Paul
Chantelou, regarding the artist's Israelites Gathering Manna, he also
emphasized, above all else, the role of expression to teach the story
as told by the ancient authorities. Poussin wanted Chantelou, his
longtime friend and receiver of the painting, to be able to distin-

guish the various emotions that could narrate the events leading up

20

 

Figure 1. Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael. Judgment of
Paris. Engraving, c. 1510.

21

to and including the Israelites' deliverance, as narrated in the Book
of Moses. Poussin wrote that the first seven figures on the left
side would tell all that was written there, and he counselled his

"

friend to . . . study the story and the picture in order to see

whether each thing is appropriate to the subject."20
The connoisseur André Félibien promoted and publicized the
classical theories of Poussin, Fréart and LeBrun in his published
account of the seven conference discourses that were read to the
Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1667, four years after the
academy rules and procedures were instituted under the direction of
Jean-Baptiste Colbert as Finance Minister.21 In his preface to the
published account of the first seven Academy discourses of 1667,
Félibien wrote that the painter should begin with a perfect knowledge
in his mind of the action he wished to represent as well as the
compositional parts appropriate to his understanding of the subject.
As with Poussin, he noted that history and fable were best suited to
the grand manner of painting and that an art well-conceived should
surpass the actual imitation of the thing in order to instruct and
satisfy.22
To better instruct the viewer, the figures and all the
ordinance had to be placed in such a manner ". . . that one could
even judge that which has preceded the action."23 Individual expres-
sions that were well-suited to the imaginary figures were necessary
to suggest to the spectator a prior state of affairs as well as the

consequences that the action had produced on the principal character.

Félibien restated the official classical formula of the Academy which

22

emphasized that supporting figures had to have expressions that
helped to explain the reasons for the main figure's expression in its
complexity. The painter should always choose to depict only one
among several possible actions. At this early date, Félibien has not
yet suggested that the figure display a dramatic relationship with
the cause of its emotion.

As Premier Peintre du Roi and Chancelier of the Royal Academy

 

 

of Painting and Sculpture during the 1660's, Charles LeBrun popular-
ized the idea that Academy discourses could supply a definite code of
rules for young artists on the topics of invention, expression, design
and color.24 LeBrun followed the scheme of ancient philosophers as
well as that of Lomazzo and Descartes when he divided the eleven
principal passions of the soul into the gentle "concupiscent" and the
violent "irascible" passions. LeBrun adhered closely to Descartes's

Traité des passions when defining admiration as the first passion and

 

when grouping the passions into simple and composite. LeBrun adopted
the Cartesian premise that in every potential encounter that a person
has with an object, the several psychological states of emotion that
could be experienced were naturally connected with one another. The
soul first affected the brain and the face when a passion was being
aroused. Eyebrows, pupils, mouth, nose and cheeks were those areas

of the head through which LeBrun traced the birth and progress of the
different passions. LeBrun emphasized that each passion used features
from the previous emotional state. For nearly a century after its

inception in 1671, LeBrun's Traité de l'expression des passions

 

influenced Henri Testelin, Antoine Coypel and Claude Henri Watelet,

23

among others, who wrote at considerable length about LeBrun's facial
and head characterizations of the passions.

Henri Testelin's Sentiments recueillis en tables de précepts,
or summary book of the rules and precepts for young painters, first
published in 1680, effectively combined LeBrun's facial and head
characterizations of the passions with the fundamental Academy notion
that expression gave intelligence to and edified the painted subject.
At first, the painter had to collect his expressions from recorded
accounts of the heroes of the story. It was necessary to research
the subject to determine how to most effectively express the image
and the idea. As with other academicians sympathetic to Poussin and
the grand manner of painting, Testelin believed that all the parts of
the painting had to concur to form an exact idea of the subject so
that it could inspire spectators with emotions suitable to that
idea.25 Academy discourses of the early eighteenth century followed
Testelin's synthesis of choice and demonstration of the passions with
regard to the topic of history painting.

During the late 1670's, Félibien and de Piles extended their
discussion of the passions to include convincing physical evidence of
the passions' emotional cost to the principal figure of the painting.
They wanted the painter to know how to sympathetically touch the
spectator by displaying the many unintentional physical marks that
anxiety caused on the principal figure's body and by revealing the
figure's dramatic response to a recognizable source of affliction.

In the fifth part of his Entretiens sur les vies et sur les

ouvrages des peintres, Félibien acknowledged that there were certain

24

principles and rules to follow which would suitably characterize the
disposition of the figure affected by passions of the soul. Yet, the
painter had to personally know the exact passion that he wished to
represent by knowing exactly what feelings brought it about. Félibien
went beyond LeBrun's characterizations for the head and face to include
a discussion of how the passion would affect the body as a whole. He
also wanted to dramatize how the passion would take hold of the prin-
cipal figure and dispose that figure toward the source of the passion:

But I will tell you that the knowledge of the various

movements by which the mind of a lover is agitated

while her passion lasts requires a very exact study.

It impresses on the body different marks, according

to the different transports in which it finds itself.

Sometimes joy bursts onto the face, and sometimes

that same face appears pale and dying when joy gives

way to sadness. . . . Sometimes those lovers appear

completely on fire, and at other times, they are as

ice. Sometimes they make complaints and are immodest,

afterwards they are mute and insensible. . . .

Those different changes . . . happen as the soul

finds itself agitated between fear and hOpe, and it

is this which causes them to display marks of joy or

distress.26
Félibien was here writing about the psychological states of languor
and ravishment that could be observed in those persons who strongly
experienced love when they enjoyed the presence of a person that they
desired. Félibien recalled the state of a lover who appeared more
present in the object that he loved and whose soul seemed to abandon
a body that had become immobile and lifeless. The author cited
Annibale Carracci's Jupiter and Juno (Figure 2) from the Palazzo

Farnese in Rome as an example of a figure that was afflicted with such

desire and inclination toward the source of its passion:

25

L3.M}£-w~-
:.c..

 

_ <u1v *

Fresco,

Ju iter and Juno.

Annibale Carracci.
c. 1601-8.

Figure 2.

26

I am going to consider a tableau where Jupiter is
represented with Juno, in which one sees the marks
of a very violent passion, whether one regards the
action and countenance of this god, or whether one
considers the emotion of his face and his languish-
ing eyes. . . . One could very well make the same
observation in a tableau where Titian has painted
Venus and Adonis.

In Carracci's figure of Jupiter, Félibien found a figure that displays
considerable feeling through lively body movement. Jupiter's expan-
sive tilt toward the body of Juno is highlighted by the considerably
raised right leg and the torso of Jupiter, which twists around from a
frontal to a side position as it leans into Juno. In Titian's Veggs

and Adonis that was mentioned by Félibien, the figure of Venus twists

 

around from a frontal to a rear position in order to embrace the
departing figure of Adonis (Figure 3).

Giovanni Bellori's account of Carracci's Jupiter and Juno,

 

which was probably known by Félibien through the auspices of the
French Academy in Rome and through the publication of the Vite de'

pittori,fiscultori et architetti moderni in 1672, differed considerably

 

from Félibien's account. Bellori's description downplays Jupiter's
excitement and draws more upon Ovid's legend of the marriage of the
two gods. Although Bellori described the extended hands and warm
embrace of Jupiter as well as the warm but diffident response of Juno,
he did not see the languor and ravishment in Jupiter that Felibien
did. "Thus, Jupiter," wrote Bellori, "turning amorously to her
(Juno), breathes the most benign influences, and that brow which

"28 Titian's figure of Venus is

makes the heavens clear is bright.
even further removed from the "warm" and "majestic" countenance of

Jupiter, to denote a despairing individual who displays her suffering

27

 

Venus and Adonis.

0
l4
5
5

.1
.1
l!
13
ea
CV
en
va
C
0
DD
80
.1
21
.1.1
To

Figure 3.

28

through the great lateral torsion of her body. In the case of
Jupiter and Venus, the head leans back and the eyes are turned up to
signify exertion: a fact that is noticed and hinted at by Felibien.

Unlike his earlier writings, Félibien's Entretiens mentions figures

 

whose varied body movements strongly suggest different stages of
action in a single motion that visually opposes a restful and an
active state of mind in the same figure.

In the course of his discussion on the emotional states of
figures, Félibien considered how passions such as distress were mixed
with varying degrees of hope and fear. This imprint of hope or fear
would, in turn, give momentary vigor or languor to the face and body
of figures.29 The expression of liveliness or abandon would be
further reinforced by showing the figure's physical closeness to or
distance from the object of desire or repulsion.30

Félibien cited the example of Raphael's Massacre of the

 

Innocents (Figure 4) where ". . . those who hold their children that
are still alive, attempt to flee and save themselves; and those who
see them massacred, will abandon themselves in distress, or only have
strength to reveal the effects of their despair."31 In Raimondi's
engraving of Raphael's work, we can see in the two female figures in
the foreground, instances of recent vigor that makes the lunging
torso and tilted head outstrip the lower part of the body. Félibien
believed that the spectator would sympathize with a figure that
physically begins to show signs of languor, abandon, fear or any
other distressful or anxious state. "Recent distress, which is

tender and which has not had time to make an impression beyond the

29

 

Figure 4. Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael. Massacre of
the Innocents. Engraving, c. 1510.

30

head to the body," wrote Félibien, "renders a figure beautiful and
touching."32 When the spectator could be led to imagine a comparable
degree of suffering in himself, he would be led to tears:

When it (distress) is a little less strong, we pour

out our tears, we cast outside of us . . . a part of

our affliction; and in exhausting by this means the

humor that oppresses us, we discharge from ourselvgs,

little by little, the burden that we have written. 3
The spectator could undergo this process of catharsis, or the cleans—
ing of the soul if the supporting figures in the narrative signalled
a degree of compassion and misery that was appropriate to the situa-
tion. Such subsidiary expressions tell the spectator that he or she
is to pity the person who is unjustly afflicted. "We expect it
(misfortune) to happen in order to take part in the figure's afflic-

tion."34

We will be touched with compassion when we see the figure
effectively in pain at its own realization of suffering.35 Charles
LeBrun, Noel Coypel and the young Jean Jouvenet painted mythological
and religious dramas during the 1670's with clear cathartic intent.
The early rococo painters inherited this interest in subsidiary
figures who show appropriate expressions of pity and confusion.
Félibien devoted several pages to the expression of pudeur,
which the author defined as a combination of prudent shame and genteel
character. This pudeur is experienced at the moment of an improper
encounter with a second figure. "This shame appears on the face of a
Susanna, or of a Lucretia, because of the injury they will have
received."36 Felibien discovered an expression of pudeur in Raphael's

painting of the Holy Family. When the aggressive behavior of Joseph's

mistress causes him shame and fear, Joseph expresses this compound

31

passion with his open mouth, troubled look, lively motion of arms and
hands and the effort he makes to flee and save himself.37 Félibien
noted that pudeur was very becoming to young gens, who regarded the
red color spread across the face as the vermilion of virtue.38
Pudeur was prized for the great burst it produced on the face and for
the respect it brought to the person who induced the red color.39 As
with the other passions of the soul, pudeur was to move the spectator
to compassion as a result of the figure's recognition of its own

innocence and the injustice dealt to it.

In his Conversations sur la connaissance de la peinture,

 

published in 1678, Roger de Piles similarly extended the discussion
of passions of the soul to include their unsettling effects on the
body. De Piles directed his attention to gentle passions, which
although tranquil on the face, frequently disguise a very agitated
interior:

But for the gentle expressions, whether they appear

as an effect of the soul's tranquility, or because

they are of those sorts of passions which cause

little change on the face, they do not permit one to

see that the interior is very strongly agitated.

De Piles looked at Rubens's Judgment of Paris, Descent from the Cross

and Saint George and pointed to passions of astonishment, sadness and

 

fear, which are overcoming the figures of Paris, Mary and the three
confidants of the king's daughter in Saint George. He write that
Rubens's figure of Paris (Figure 5) displays a certain negligence of
body and attentiveness of head that results when the interior is

strongly preoccupied with a decision:

32

 

Figure 5. Peter Paul Rubens. Judgment of Paris. Oil on wood,
c. 1632-5.

33

Paris is at the other side seated on a mound of turf
in the habit of a berger; one of his legs is placed
on the ground, and the other is negligently extended.
His dreamy look and entire attitude allow one to
sufficiently see that he is strongly occupied within
by the judgment that he is going to make. 1

De Piles suggested that the spectator fix his attention on the
painting and think about the main figure's possible actions by the
subtle and at times confusing gestures of the head, hands and legs.

In Rubens's Descent from the Cross (Figure 6), Mary approaches

 

the body of Christ with an expression of distress in her face and
head, which advances forward and within reach of that of Christ.
Mary's newly emerging expression of sadness is highlighted by her
open mouth, inflated nostrils and even eyebrows. Mary's attentive
expression of heightened grief touches the spectator:

In the Descent from the Cross, the air of the Virgin,

which reveals an abatement of distress, is represented

in a fashion so touching and particular that it could

suit no other mother in like occasion than the Mother

of God. . . . The Virgin . . . advancing to receive

the body of her son, regards Christ with a look of

distress which penetrates the viZwer when one sees

that figure with some attention. 2
Rubens's Saint George (Figure 7) similarly displays figures who are
strongly preoccupied by passions stirred up by objects that are close
by. The three women behind the princess hold onto each other in
mixed gestures of advance and retreat, signalling that their very
recent admiration and joy is not without traces of apprehension on
their bodies. De Piles and Félibien were both interested in the
bursting forth of passions upon figures in dramatic settings. Both

authors frequently point to bodily attitudes and facial expressions

that show an unsettling physical state that could easily be read and

34

 

Descent from the Cross.

Peter Paul Rubens.
Oil on canvas, c. 1615.

Figure’6.

35

 

Figure 7. Peter Paul Rubens. Saint George. Oil on canvas, 1629.

36

felt by a sympathetic spectator who is aware of the danger that is
present in the narrative scene. From the time that he wrote his
preface to the Academy conferences of 1667 until the publication of

his first Entretiens in 1671-2, Félibien came to emphasize drawing

 

more as a creative process and less as a mechanical process sub-
ordinate to other parts of the composition.43 As with de Piles, the
act of drawing included not only learning and study but also the
inexpressible je ne sais quoi, which spectators could directly

experience.

Eighteenth-Century Interest in Spectator Empathy
After 1700, writers on art theory and practice placed even
more emphasis upon the sympathetic rendering of the passions and the
physical effect of the passions on the body. In his Cours de

principes de peinture, first published in 1708, de Piles wrote that

 

traits of the face usually required the accompaniment of principal
body parts in order to touch the viewer and keep his interest. De
Piles brought new attention to the expressive power of hands, head
and eyes to directly communicate the sentiments of a principal
character's soul. Each expression requires a different combination
of actions from the face and body. The author repeated Quintilian's
remark that the motions of the head make visibly known our supplica-
tions, threatenings, gentleness, haughtiness, love and humility. Our
hands, as servants of the head, strengthen the action signified by

the head. With our hands, we hope, desire, promise, summon, reject,

question and approve.

37

De Piles was also insistent that the painter imagine the
passion as best he could. The painter had to interpret the passions
in his own way from nature as well as antique sculpture. The young
artist should choose those means of expressing passions which are
most suited to touching the gens d'ésprit, or aristocratic and non-
professional persons of taste:

It is sufficient that he (painter) know that the
passions are movements of our soul which allow
certain sentiments to flare up when it is in the
presence of some object, without waiting for order
and the judgment of reason. The painter ought to
envisage that object with attention, representing

it present as well as absent, and ask himself what
he would naturally do if he were surprised by the
same passion. It is necessary to do more. He must
take the place of the person impassioned, arouse

his own imagination. . . . But it is not enough
that the painter feel the passion of the soul, he
must make it felt by others; and that among several
characters by which a passion could be expressed,

he choose those that he will believe the most suited
to touch especially the gens d'ésprit. . . . When
one has once caught the taste of a spectatora nothing
interests him more in favor of the painting.

 

The painter's imagination and the inexpressible notion of "genius"
were important in conjuring up an imitation that would surprise and
preoccupy the spectator. De Piles restated the theory of imitation,
promoted by Horace and repeated by Leonardo and Lomazzo, that the
best and most imaginative copy from nature will move an audience of
spectators. Although painting and poetry surprise by an imitation
that seems true to life, painting has the ability to move our

H

passions . . . as if the thing were effectively happening."46 Sight

is the most direct route to the soul of spectators. The soul is
secretly moved when the person appears to observe the very thing

I

that is represented by the artist.

38

De Piles believed that raisonnemens would help the spectator

 

to take note of the effects that the painting has produced on his

soul and the painter's reason for such a depiction. Raisonnemens

 

will explain to the spectator the cause of his sympathy and surprise
". . . by the action of the understanding which knows one thing by
another, and which draws from it consequences."47 The painter's

raisonnemens could be induced from the attitudes, expressions and

 

movements caused by the passions. "There are compositions," wrote
de Piles, "which represent for us conversations and dialogues, where
. . "48
we know the very sentiments of figures that appear to converse.
Raisonnemens is also expressed in a figure's transition from one

physical state to another. De Piles cited Rubens's Birth of Louis

 

£111, in the Luxembourg Gallery at Paris, as a good example of the
dramatic shift of the main character, the Queen Mother, from a
distressing state of childbirth to one of joy and fondness for the
newborn child.

Antoine Coypel adopted de Piles's notion of painting and
poetry as sister arts which imitate nature and animate virtue in the
savant as well as the ignorant person. Painting moves the most
secret provinces of the soul in its lively imagination, grand ideas
and correct imitation which renders it "mistress of the heart and

,49

soul.’ The painting causes the spectator to feel as if he were

always in company with the main figures. The mute conversation and

lively language of the eyes ". . . causes one to converse with the

painted figure even in the absence of friends, parents and of all

those whom we hold most dear. . . ."50

39

Coypel wrote that the movements of the body, or gestures,
give soul to the figures, and even prevent the best compositions
from becoming cold, languishing and inanimate.51 He recalled
Cicero's comment that action is the eloquence of the body.52
Gestures should always be coordinated with the head, eyes and face.
As with other early eighteenth-century writers on art, Coypel noted
that gestures had to suit the moral character of the figure, particu-
larly expressions of sincerity, nobility, affectation, audacity and
haughtiness that characterize persons of different social status and
sex.53

Coypel followed Quintilian and Leonardo in his assertion that
the hands are the principal instrument of our wishes. The hands
allow figures to speak in a universal language.54 Coypel counselled
the young painter to observe the speaking hands of the pantomime as
well as the animate gestures of the deaf. Since the goal of painting
is to move the spectator to tears or joy, the painter should take
note of Boileau's passionate actor who had to experience a feeling
in order to excite it in the audience.55

In his expose of the different passions of the soul in the
Epistles a mon fils, Coypel followed LeBrun in his typology of the
general passions and Félibien in his discussion of passions such as
love, desire and joy that are naturally mixed in a single expression.
It is significant that Coypel did not write about distress, fear or
anger, which greatly concerned LeBrun and Felibien, particularly
where grand history paintings were to offer serious moral instruction

to the spectator. "The simplest expressions are the most difficult,"

4O

wrote Coypel, "and meanwhile the most agreeable."56 The painter
should never cause his figures to stir with too much violence, and
must strive for that which is naive, noble and simple.57

Coypel devoted over half his discussion of the passions to
the expressions of love and joy. Love was the great deceiver of
hearts and the most dangerous passion, which, after having enchanted

the heart of its victims, "

. . . troubles its empire by all the
passions which follow and surround it."58 Love and desire were
complex passions which involved traits from most of the other passions
and that were difficult to resolve and tame. The passion of joy,
which became lively and strong in the presence of the thing it finds
good, was the most charming and agreeable momentary state that the
painter could find.59
Coypel believed that pretentious, ambitious and proud individ-

uals would encounter more adverse effects from these passions than the

homme d'ésprit, who has a worthy opinion of himself and who searches

 

to admire good things, to instruct himself and to acquire knowledge
of things that surprise him.60 The want to please often diminished
the deleterious effects of love by polishing the most clumsy individ-
ual, by causing one's intelligence to shine, and by elevating one's
courage and sense of honor.61 The injuries of insult and the afflic-
tions of jealousy are most commonly felt by ambitious persons. Weak-
minded, lax and envious men easily abandon themselves to hatred.62
Coypel promotes the sentiments of generosity, courage and honor which,

in themselves, can restore tranquility to the soul and regularize

one's rapport and demeanor.63 Unlike LeBrun, Félibien and Testelin,

41

Coypel's discussion had a strong ethical tone and promoted the
honnéte aristocratic values of the man of taste and of the courtier.
As with de Piles and other writers of the early eighteenth century,
Coypel promoted gentle passions that came to be associated with the
delicate taste of the rococo style in art and architecture. These
delicate passions were to be displayed so naturally in all their
complexity that they could create in the pleased spectator the same
passions. Coypel and de Piles wrote that the goal of painting was
to please and instruct the spectator. LeBrun, Félibien and other
seventeenth-century writers on art placed greater emphasis on the
painting's ability to instruct and to satisfy and did not raise the
problem of creating naive and simple expressions that could amuse,

and occupy the spectator and communicate directly with him as well.

CHAPTER ONE: NOTES

1Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, trans. John R. Spencer
(Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1976), p. 78.

2Ibid.

 

3The Complete Works of Horace, Edited by Ernest Rhys, (New
York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1911), p. 137, lines 145-60.

4Alberti, 0n Painting, p. 77.
5

 

Ibid.

61bid.

7Leonardo da Vinci, Treatise on Painting, trans. A. Philip
McMahon, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), p. 151.

 

81bid., p. 152.
91bid.
101bid., p. 149.
lllbid.
lzlbid.

13Quintilian encouraged the orator to attend the tribunal and
learn how the advocates increase their power of expression through
precise gestures and posturing. For the influence of Quintilian on
humanist art theory, see Rensselaer W. Lee, Ut Pictura Poesis. The
Humanist Theory of Painting, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
1967).

 

14See The Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian, 4 vols., trans.
H. E. Butler (New York: Putnam, 1921-1931), 3:111, 157.

5Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, A Tracte Containing the Artes of
Curious Paintings, Carvings and Buildings Written First in Italian,
trans. Richard Haydocke (Oxford: Printed for R. H. . . by Joseph
Barnes, 1598), 2:3.

161bid., 2:5.

17Paul Fréart de Chambray, An Idea of the Perfection of

Painting, trans. John Evelyn (London: Printed for Henry Herringman,
1668), p. 32.

42

43

lslbid.

lglbid.
20Elizabeth Gilmore Holt, A Documentary History of Art, 2
vols., (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 2:147.

21See Nicholas Pevsner, Academies of Art, Past and Present,

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940), pp. 87-8.

22André Félibien, Entretiens sur les vies et sur les ouvrages
plus excellens peintres anciens et modernes;gavec la vie des archi-
tectes, (Westmead, England: Gregg Press, Ltd., 1967), 5:309-12.

23

 

Ibid., 5:313.

4Pevsner, Academies, pp. 94-5; and Henri Jouin, Charles

LeBrun et les arts sous Louis XIV, (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale,
1889), pp. 371-90.

 

25Jouin, Conférences, p. 153.

 

26"Mais je vous dirai que ce qui demande une étude trés-
éxacte, est la connaissance des divers mouvemens dont l'esprit d'un
Amant est agité pendant que sa passion dure. Car elle imprime sur
son corps des marques differentes, selon les differens transports ou
il se trouve. Tant6t la joy éclat sur son visage, et tant6t ce meme
visage parait pale et mourant quand la joye fait place a la tristesse
. . . Quelquesfois ces mémes Amans paraissent tout de feu, et d'autres
fois ils sont tout de glace. Tant6t ils font des plaintes, et
incontinent apres ils sont muets et insensibles." "Ces différens
changemens . . . arrivent selon que l'ame se trouve agitée entre la
crainte et l'esperance, et c'est ce qui fait qu'elle donne des
marques de joye ou de douleur." Félibien, Entretiens, 3:201.

27"Je fis considerer a Pymandre un tableau, on Jupiter est
represente avec Junon, dans lequel soit que l'on regarde l'action et
la contenance de ce Dieu, soit que l'on considere l'émotion de son
visage et de ses yeux languissans, l'on voit les marques d'une passion
tres-violente." Ibid.

8Giovanni Bellori, The Lives of Annibale and Agostino Carracci,
trans. Catherine Enggass (University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1968), p. 40.

29Félibien, Entretiens, 3:216.

 

301bid., 3:204, 209.

44

31"Celles qui tiennent leurs enfants encore vivans, tachent
de fuir et de se sauver; et celles qui les voyent massacrez, s'aban-
donnent a la douleur, ou n'ont de force que pour montrer des effets
de leur desespoir, en s'arrachant les cheveux, et se jettant sur les
corps de ces pauvres Innocens." Ibid., 3:216.

32 .
"Quand elle est un peu m01ns forte, nous versons des larmes,
nous jettons au dehors, pour ainsi dire, une partie de notre afflic-
tion; et en epuisant par ce moyen l'humeur qui nous oppresse, nous

nous dechargeons pen a peu du fardeau que nous avions au dedans."
Ibid., 3:214-150

33"Et puis une personne peut encore etre quoiqu'elle soit
affligés; car i1 faut que la douleur ne doit mise sur son visage, que
comme un voile au travers duquel on appercoive sa beauté, lors
principalement que la douleur est toute récente, et qu'elle n'a pas
encore eu le tems de faire impression sur le corps, comme dans les
premiers momens que la Magdelaine se convertit." Ibid., 3:217-18.

34"Nous attendous qu'il soit arrivé pour prendre part a son
affliction." Ibid., 3:214-15.

35". . . d'ordinaire nous ne sommes touchez de compassion que
quand nous voyons une personne étre effectivement dans la peine et
dans le malheur." Ibid., 3:214.

36"La honte parait sur le visage d'une Susanne, ou d'une
Lucréce, a cause de l'injure qu'elles auront recfiés." Ibid., 3:230.

37Ibid.

381bid., 3:233.

39Ibid., 3:234.

40"Mais pour les expressions douces, soit qu'elles paraissent
comme un effet de la tranquillité de l'éme, ou qu'elles soient de ces
sortes de passions qui causant peu de changement sur le visage, ne
laissent pas de faire voir que le dedans est fort agité. . . ."
Roger de Piles, Conversations sur la connaissance de la peinture et
sur le jugement qu'on doit faire des tableaux, (Geneva: Slatkine
Reprints, 1970), p. 269.

 

 

41 . .
"Paris est de l'autre costé a551s sur une motte de gazon en
habit de berger l'une de ses jambes pose a terre, et l'autre est
negligement estendue. Sa mine réveuse et toute son attitude font voir

assez qu'est au deduns tort occupe au jugement qu'il va rendre."
Ibid., p. 163.

45

42"Dans la descente de Croix, l'air de la Vierge qui fait
voir un abbatement de douleur, est represente d'une facon si touchante
et si particuliere, qu'il ne peut convenir a aucune mere en semblable
occasion qu'a la Mere de Dieu . . . la Vierge . . . s'avance pour
recevoir 1e corps de son fils, qu'elle regarde avec une douleur dont
on est soi-méme penetré, quand on voit cette figure avec quelque
attention." Ibid., pp. 134, 269.

43Claire Pace, "'Dessein' and 'Coloris': the Growth of
Félibien's Entretiens," Journal of European Studies 10 (March 1980),
p. 53.

 

 

44Roger de Piles, Cours de peinture par principes, (Geneva:
Slatkine Reprints, 1969), p. 172.

 

45"Il suffit qu'ils sachent que les passions font des
mouvemens de notre éme qui se laisse emporter a certains sentimens a
la vfie de quelque objet, sans attendre l'ordre, et le jugement de la
raison. Le Peintre doit envisager cet objet avec attention, 1e
representer present quoiqu'absent, et se demander a sci-meme ce qu'il
feront naturellement s'il étoit surpris de la méme passion. Il faut
meme faire davantage: i1 faut prendre la place de la personne
passionnée, s'echausser l'imagination. . . Mais ce n'est point
assez que le Peinte sente les passions de l'éme, i1 faut qu'il les
fasse sentir aux autres; et qu'entre plusieu caracteres dont une
passion peut s'exprimer, il choisisse ceux qu'il croira les plus
propres a toucher surtout les gens d'ésprit, ce qui ne se peut faire
3 mon avis, que par un sens exquis, et par un jugement solide. Quand
on a une fois attrape le gout du spectateur, rien ne l'interesse
davantage en faveur du Peintre." Ibid., pp. 165-66.

46"J'ai souvent jetté les yeux sur un tableau qui represente
ce spectacle digne de pitié, et je ne les ai jamais retirés sans
larmes, tant la Peinture a scu représenter la chose comme si elle se
passait effectivement." Ibid., pp. 442-3.

47"On entend par le mot de Raisonnement, ou la cause et la
raison par lequelle l'Ouvrage fait un bon effet, ou l'action de
l'entendement qui connait une cho par une autre, et qui en tire des
consequences." Ibid., p. 462.

48 . .
"11 y a des tableaux qui nous representent des Conversations
et des Dialogues, ou nous connaissons jusqu'au sentiment des figures
qui paraissent s'entretenir." Ibid., p. 463.

9Roger de Piles helped to revive the Horacian idea of g£_
pictura poesis, "as is painting so is poetry," which combined painting
and poetry as sister arts and often viewed the painter as an accom-
plished poet. From Aristotle's Poetics, Renaissance and Baroque
critics of art took up the idea that human nature in action is the
true source of the painter's imitation of nature. From the writings

 

46

of Leonardo da Vinci through those of Roger de Piles and Antoine
Coypel, painting was compared to poetry and even deemed superior in
that it directly appealed to our sight, which was a direct path to
the soul of the spectator. For a discussion of the humanist doctrine
of ut pictura poesis and its influence on seventeenth-century French
writers on art, see Lee, Ut Pictura Poesis, pp. 5-8, 24—8.

 

50"Il est vrai que cette conversation est muette; mais le
langage des yeux n'est pas toujours le moins vif . . . La peinture
nous fait, pour ainsi dire, converser dans l'absence meme avec nos
amis, nos parents et tout ce quenous avons de plus cher; et non
seulement avec ceux avec qui nous vivons, mais encore avec ceux qui

vivoient dans les temps les plus reculés. . . ." Jouin, Conferences,
p. 221.

51". . . Je dois parler de l'expression des passions, qui se
fait par les mouvements du corps ou par les gestes qui doivent donner
de l'éme aux figures, et sans lesquels les tableaux les mieux
composes, les mieux dessines, peints et coloriés, seroient froids,
languissants et inanimés comme le remarque Ciceron l'action est
l'eloquence du corps." Ibid., p. 339.

52

 

Ibid.

531bid., p. 340.

541bid., pp. 347-8.

551bid., p. 343.

56"Les expressions les plus simples sont les plus difficiles,
et cependant le plus agréables; ce sont des beautes naturelles qui

ont leur graces avec elles et qui n'ont pas besoin d'étre fardées."
Ibid., p. 355.

57Ibid., p. 341.

58"ll faut encore ajouter qui si l'amour dans sa naissance
parait n'avoir rien que d'aimable, a mesure qu'il croit et qu'il
s'agrandit, il abuse de ses forces . . . Son aveuglement furieux 1e
porte meme jusqu'a troubler son empire par toutes les passions qui
le suivent et qui l'environnent." Ibid., p. 355.

591bid., p. 360.

6OIbid., p. 354.

611bid., p. 355.

621bid., p. 358.

631bid., pp. 353,_358.

CHAPTER TWO

INTIMACY AND UNCERTAINTY IN EARLY

ROCOCO DEPICTIONS OF DRAMA

Introduction

During the 1680's and 1690's, Charles de La Fosse and Antoine
Coypel produced compositions on subjects from contemporary drama
which display the early Rococo interest in intensely preoccupied
central figures and actively involved surrounding figures that are
responsive to the principal's anxiety. The contemporary taste for
intense drama of the tragic moment in classical and biblical subjects
was formed in the grand compositions of LeBrun and outstanding pupils
of his style, such as Jean Jouvenet. While Jouvenet's expressionate
treatment of the biblical subject of Esther before Asahuerus and the
Homeric story of Iphigenia in Aulis show the Academy's interest in
forcefully depicting the psychological and physical state of figures
consumed by fear, anquish and surprise, La Fosse and Antoine Coypel

deal with the same subject in a more intimate and sympathetic manner.

The Fainting of Esther
Jouvenet's Fainting of Esther before Asahuerus (Figure 8)
appears to have been inspired by Poussin's Esther before Asahuerus

(Figure 9), painted twenty years earlier. Jouvenet may have either

I

47

48

 

Figure 8. Jean Jouvenet. Faintin of Esther before Asahuerus.
Oil on canvas, 1674.

 

49

 

Figure 9. Nicholas Poussin. Esther before
Asahuerus. Oil on canvas, c. 1655.

50

seen the painting which was in the French collection of Colbert de
Seignelay or the engraving of Poussin's work by Jean Pesne.1 Jouvenet
and Poussin treated the moment that Esther intrudes upon King
Asahuerus in his throne room, under the possible pain of death and in
order to request that the Jewish people be spared the decree initiated
by Aman, the king's evil advisor. The story of Esther became popular
in the seventeenth century as retold by Pierre Matthieu, Montchrestien,
Du Ryer and Desmaret.2 Seventeenth and eighteenth—century painters
chose the moment where virtuous Esther faints when in the presence of
the surprised king, an incident not actually recorded in the Book of
Esther. Poussin's composition is evenly balanced by two groups of
statuesque figures. To the right, Asahuerus and his three assistants
are gently aroused to a warm expression of concern. The cheek muscles
are raised, the brows slightly knitted and the mouth is partly open

in the faces of the three assistants, and in the figures attending

the collapsed Esther. Jouvenet has retained the separate and recog-
nizable groups that are found with Poussin in order to emphasize the
forbidding presence of Asaheurus. Yet, Jouvenet has exaggerated the
expressions, put more movement into the gestures and portrayed the
scene off-center and to the left along a diagonal axis that recedes
from right to left deeply into the background. Poussin's figure of
Asahuerus remains restrained with one hand gently raised and the

other completely at rest. Jouvenet's Asahuerus, on the other hand,

is ready to rise from his throne with his left arm fully extended and
his left leg poised to support a figure that will rise to its feet.

The assistants of Esther no longer wind around Esther as in the

51

graceful curve created by Poussin. In the fashion of LeBrun, Jouvenet
presents studied individual poses of Esther's attendants, who are less
graceful but more dramatic than those of Poussin. The pose of Esther
is also well-researched to show how the head of a figure that has
fainted realistically and unflatteringly collapses onto a limp shoul-
der that has been propped up from behind.

Jouvenet's facial expressions are more animated to suit poses
that display emotion as a grand and heroic event. Asahuerus's
assistants have deeply sagging brows and heads that widely tilt in
opposite directions to express deep gloom and a sense of tragedy at
the dire state and possibly fatal consequences of the principal
action. Asahuerus has widely open eyes and inflated nostrils and is
given an expression of determination. The attendants of Esther have
an expression of astonishment tinged with anguish. Their mouths are
gaping, their nostrils inflated and their brows significantly raised
in the center. In Jouvenet's painting, the anxiety of the moment is
created by the forbidding and forceful king and the lively anguish of
Esther's attendants. We fear that Asahuerus, in the moment of recog-
nition, may fail to shield the queen with his gold sceptor and thereby
allow the palace guard to kill her as they would any unannounced
visitor. While the king's left arm and hand reach out to signal his
own dissatisfaction, Asahuerus's right hand toys with the possibility

of raising the sceptor to save Esther.

Antoine Coypel's Esther before Asahuerus (Figure 10), painted

 

in 1704, was presented to Louis XIV as one piece in an Old Testament

series for the Gobelin Tapestries. His work differs from that of

52

 

Oil

Esther before Asahuerus.

Antoine Coypel.

Figure 10

on canvas, 1704.

53

Jouvenet and Poussin in its setting and principal action. The airy
marble palace has become a cozy drawing room with a brazier to the
left rear and an elegant Persian rug that covers much of the floor.
The viewer is brought into the parlor and becomes a bystander to the
left of Aman, who presumably holds the decree that he wrote which
called for the death of all the king's Jewish subjects.3 The princi-
pal action has changed from Esther's collapse at the moment of her
bold entrance into the throne room to that of Asahuerus's intervention
on the queen's behalf. Much in keeping with Racine's Esther, which
was performed several times at Court prior to Coypel's painting, the
action reveals a gentle and good husband who hastens to console his
frightened queen. Now, the figure of Esther faces us in the center
of the composition. Esther's body does not simply fall as in the
other two compositions. Rather, it is languorously poised in the
arms of the attendants and the king. Esther's left extended arm,
left leg, hanging head and flexing wrist and fingers reveal a body
that is carefully poised as if to suggest a state of suffering and
anxiety. The formality of Poussin and Jouvenet is lost in the absence
of heroic body gestures and expressions of astonishment and anguish.
The only vigorous expression in the canvas is the anger of the
diabolic figure of the eaves-dropping Aman. Esther has a distressed
expression that is closer to LeBrun's Academy drawing of languor than
that of ravishment. The three figures surrounding Esther are physi-
cally very close to her. One is reminded of Poussin's figures which
affectionately hug the falling queen, except for the fact that Coypel

shows their faces, which tenderly lean toward Esther. The figure to

54

the left of Esther sets the stage for a tender group interaction
with her eyebrows sharply raised in the center, the partly open
mouth and her open outstretched hand which gently clasps the chest
of the queen. Her pose nearly mimics the languorous posture of the
queen.

Racine's depiction of the difficult moment following Esther's
intrusion upon Asahuerus similarly explores the theme of tenderness
and innocence. The playwright spotlights Esther's innocence and the
power of her virtuous action to tame the austere and cruel king.
Asahuerus speaks in response to Esther's faintness and fear:

Powerful gods! What strange paleness of her tint all of

a sudden erases her color.

Esther, what are you afraid of?

Am I not your brother?

Oh Sun! 0h Flame of eternal light!

I am myself disturbed; and without shuddering

I can not see her pain and seizure.

Calm yourself queen, calm the fright that

presses down upon you.

From the heart of Asahuerus, reigning mistress,

Experience only its ardent friendship. . . .

I only find in you an undefinable grace,

Which always charms me and never leaves me.

From the amiable virtue such soft and powerful attractiveness!

Esther breathes only innocence and peace.

From the darkest trouble, she lights the shadow. . . .

And believe that your forehead leads to my diadem
A burst that renders it even respectable to the gods. . . .

What interest, what care agitates you, presses upon you?
I see that in hearing me, your eyes address themselves to
the heavens.

Like Racine's depiction, Coypel's scene is one displaying clemency

and tenderness: attributes that characterize the mood of early rococo

expression.

55

 

In Jean-Francois de Troy's Faintinggpf Esther (Figure 11),
exhibited in the Salon of 1737, the composition is arranged along a
diagonal that likewise places the viewer off-center and to the right
of the principal action. The diagonal that is created by this off-
center position is grander in its figure count and in its interior
recession. De Troy saw Coypel's earlier painting and nearly duplicated
the pose of the compassionate king and the distressed Esther. The
great purple drape also hangs from behind the king, but is withdrawn
to reveal a magnificent throne room that is faced with very large
Roman columns.

The collapse of Esther is more complicated here than elsewhere.
Esther's distress is accentuated by her clasping right hand and the
open gesture of her extended left hand. Her falling movement is swept
up in the pyramid whose base is defined by the swirling drapery on the
floor and the bent postures of the two attendants. The distress of
Esther is almost dwarfed by the great anxiety of the large group
around her. The straightforward grouping of Jouvenet and the cautious
bending poses of Coypel's group figures has become a series of sweeping
diagonals that cut across the diagonal line that recedes into the
picture space.

As with other French rococo paintings of the 1720's and 1730's,
de Troy has produced a feeling of keen interest and delicate astonish-
ment in accessory figures by depicting group members with forward
leaning heads and shoulders and eloquent gestures of one of their
hands. The general effect of this group commotion is to create a

feeling of uneasiness and continual surprise. In his article on taste

56

 

Figure 11. Jean-Francois de Troy. Faintin of Esther. Oil on

 

canvas, 1737.

57

written for Diderot's Encyclopédie in 1753, Montesquieu wrote that

 

keen pleasure is derived when the viewer is continually surprised by
new and unexpected occurrences:

Many painters have the fault of indiscriminately
placing contrasts everywhere, so that when we see a
figure we are immediately led to anticipate the
arrangement of the figure next to it. The continual
diversity results in a kind of similarity. . . .
Nature is more varied, it places some bodies in
repose and gives to others movements of different
kinds. . . . The soul can not support the same
situation for any length of time, because it is bound
to a body that can not endure this. . . . Since the
soul is always disposed to seeking new objects, it
enjoys all the pleasures that surprise can procure.
Surprise is a feeling that is agreeable to the soul
because its effect is rapid and attracts our atten-
tion. . . . For this reason too we delight in seeing
plays; they develop gradually, conceal events until
they happen, continually prepare new surprises for
us, and often stimulate us by revealing these sur-
prises as something we should have foreseen. . . .
Surprise can be produced by an object itself or by
the manner in which it is perceived, for the object
may appear to our eyes to be larger or smaller or
different from what it really is. We may also see
the object itself, but gccompanied by an accessory
idea that surprises us.

De Troy's painting appears to mirror Montesquieu's statement on the
rococo esthetics of surprise and uneasiness, which was derived from
the psychological theory of Jean-Baptiste DuBos, thirty years earlier.
As we travel around the group of onlookers in de Troy's scene, we see
a contrasting and unsettling mixture of poses and expressions. The
unexpected nature of the central drama is further heightened by
accessories such as the expansive drapery that takes on a life of its
own. The surprised figures who are distant from the central action
add drama and increase the sense of intrigue where the larger story

is concerned.

58

Coypel and de Troy have replaced the emphasis of Poussin and
Jouvenet on the austerity and grandeur of the palace with a more
close-knit scene in the foreground where figures generally relate to
one another more intimately and tenderly. Poussin and Jouvenet have
contrasted the austere and stolid presence of Asahuerus and his
ministers to the dramatically extended and fearful figures of Esther's
group, which is not far removed from the circumstances of the actual
biblical story. Coypel and Jouvenet have stripped the awesome or
irreproachable sense of the grand event by having Asahuerus approach
Esther just as the spectator approaches her. In this way, the
spectator can imagine how the sensations of fear and distress have
been turned inward to create a sense of crushing self-abandonment.
De Troy, as with Antoine Pater and other painters of this second
generation of rococo arts, gave a stronger sense of immediacy to the
scene by suggesting that the passions have advanced considerably

before being reflected upon by the figure.

The Sacrifice of Iphigenia

As early as 1682, Charles de La Fosse's Sacrifice of Iphigenia

 

(Figure 12) moved away from the strong emotions portrayed by LeBrun
and Jouvenet to embrace an early rococo feeling for intimacy, anxiety
and tenderness. Jouvenet painted a version of the same subject for
the mantelpiece in the Hotel de Saint-Pouange in Paris (Figure 13) at
about the same time La Fosse produced his canvas for the Salon de
Diane at Versailles. Both paintings depict the dramatic moment before

Iphigenia, Agamemnon's daughter, was to be sacrificed at the altar of

59

 

Figure 12. Charles de La Fosse. Sacrifice of

 

Iphigenia. Oil on canvas, c. 1682.

6O

 

_
5
7
6
1

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Figure 13.

85.

61

Diana. As the Greek armies were gathered under Agamemnon to launch

an attack on Troy, the Olympian gods decreed at the altar at Aulis
that favorable winds would be restored if Agamemnon's daughter
Iphigenia were sacrificed. In both paintings, the robed figure of

the elderly priest, Calchas, pronounced the oracle from above, stating
that Diana will spare Iphigenia at the last moment. Beside the priest
is the innocent figure of Iphigenia who voluntarily resigns herself

to the executioner's knife, in the name of purity and loyalty to her
father. Both paintings appear to follow Euripides's version of the
story, which tells how Diana replaced Iphigenia with a sacrificial

doe and then transported the virtuous virgin daughter away to Taurus
where she would be safe. Although both paintings display the sacri-
ficial doe and the innocence of Iphigenia in keeping with Jean
Routrou's 1640 play Iphigenia, they seem to be directly inspired by
Racine's tragedy, first performed in 1674 but ceremoniously performed
at court in 1680. The 1680 performance was given upon the arrival of
the Bavarian princess Marie-Anne as the future Dauphine of France.6
This was the same year that La Fosse painted the virtuous Iphigenia

at the court palace.

According to Racine, Achilles, the fiance of Iphigenia,
surrounded the altar of Diana with his soldiers. Iphigenia's father,
Agamemnon, who brought his daughter to be sacrificed, turned his face
away from the altar with great remorse. The priest Calchas suspended
the sacrifice to pronounce Diana's wish that another daughter of Helen,
named Eriphilia, would be sacrificed instead. Jouvenet shows the

older Agamemnon beside the altar, turning his eyes away from the

62

tragic scene. La Fosse, on the other hand, does not show the aged
king, but a young grieving soldier instead. Faithful to Racine's
play, he shows the distant Achilles who at the last moment summons
his troops to gather around the altar.

Jouvenet and La Fosse both depict the moment that the sacri-
ficial exercise has been suspended. In each composition, a submissive
Iphigenia is seated against the altar. Her torso and head are turned
away from hips and legs which are firmly planted in the direction of
the priest and his assistants. Supporting figures of the priest, the
assistants, Agamemnon, Diana and the deer all surround the central
figure, while each responds differently to the suspension of the
sacrifice. Jouvenet's supporting figures are more isolated from each
other and from Iphigenia. The figures of La Fosse's composition all
gather close to Iphigenia and respond directly to her and to a deity
that is actually within arm's reach of Calchas and Iphigenia. They
nervously anticipate the impending doom of Iphigenia. Our eye moves
quickly around the circular arrangement of figures, who are either
turned toward or away from the central action.

La Fosse's crowding figures give an immediacy to the scene
that is lacking in Jouvenet's work. Jouvenet's figures gesture
grandiosely while almost ignoring Iphigenia to look up at Diana on a
grand machine, at a distance. La Fosse's Iphigenia remains in an
anxious state. Her hands are tensely extended and her head is tilted
up with a nervous expression of surprise and hope depicted on her
face. Jouvenet's Iphigenia has a more inert expression of solicita-

tion accompanied by a languid gesture of the hand. Diana looks down

63

at Calchas from her cloud with an interested but grave expression.
Only the female figure in front of Iphigenia, perhaps Euriphilia,
looks up at the goddess in suspense and astonishment. La Fosse's
youthful servant kneels in astonishment before the altar, while a
soldier to his right covers his head in extreme grief. A departing
Diana sympathetically looks back to Calchas with her arm gently
extended toward the doe. La Fosse has depicted the moment of Clemency
when the lowered hand of Calchas has humbly dropped the knife, as if
to pay homage to the innocence of Iphigenia. Jouvenet does not convey
this feeling of Clemency since his executioner still fearfully holds
his hand tightly gripped on the knife. Racine described Calchas as
distracted or troubled (éperdu) at the moment when Diana explains her
intentions to the priest. The playwright also has Esther say to her
attendants at the moment before she faints: "My girls, hold your
distracted (éperdu) queen, I am dying."7 Both Coypel and La Fosse
have chosen to represent the moment of distraction with Esther and
Calchas as an anxious state of irresolution that will keep the viewer
intrigued. This element of confusion will characterize rococo
expression and pose in the two generations that follow La Fosse and

Coypel.

Conclusion

 

This chapter has shown how early rococo paintings by Antoine
Coypel and La Fosse shared with classical baroque works of approxi-
mately the same time period a contemporary taste for intense drama of

the tragic moment in classical and biblical subjects. Coypel and

64

La Fosse removed some of the austerity and distance that Jouvenet and
LeBrun customarily gave to the grand event and brought the spectator
and accessory figures closer to the principal figure to privately
share in its anxiety. The figural expressions that Jouvenet has

given to Esther and Iphigenia placed them accurately beyond the point
of anxiety. The spectator may be awed and even feel compassion for
their suffering, which is proportionate to the grandness of the event.
On the other hand, Coypel and La Fosse forced the spectator to con-
sider the delicate and yet different gestures of the arms and hands
of Iphigenia who reflects upon mixed sensations of hope, fear and
distress that the great event has produced on the heroine. The
various expressions of the accessory figures reinforce this preoccupa—
tion with the unexpected and unsettling emotional states of Esther

and Iphigenia. Unlike the carefully balanced figures of Jouvenet's
painting, Coypel's figures of Esther and Asahuerus are precariously
off-balanced. The spectator is led to anticipate the next movement

or shifting balance of Coypel's figures, which will also break the
sense of confusion and imbalance together in the body expression of
the figure in order to make the figure's anxiety all the more

convincing.

CHAPTER II: NOTES

1Antoine Schnapper, Au temps du roi soleil, les paintres de
Louis XIV, 1660-1715 (Lille: Palais des beaux-arts, 1968), p. 32;
Anthony Blunt, The Paintings of Nicholas Poussin 2 vols. (London:
Phaidon, 1966), 2, p. 29.

 

 

 

2Martin Turnell, Jean Racine Dramatist (London: Hamish
Hamilton, 1972), p. 280.

 

3The cozy and intimate interior setting for this and many
other royal commissions of this time was in part due to the modest
taste of the King and Madame Maintenon. With the arrival of Francoise
d' Aubigne, the Marquise de Maintenon, at the French Court as the
King's favorite in 1682 and her subsequent marriage to Louis in 1684,
the King spent more time away from the formal court etiquette of
Versailles to enjoy the pleasures and privacy of his country resi-
dences. The new manner of creating innocent dramas at Court in the
mid-1680's and their later performance in the apartments of Maintenon
during the winter of 1702 at Versailles by members of the royal family,
magnificently dressed in stage costumes, set the tone for such familiar
and intimate dramas in the future. Plays were increasingly performed
in private residences in Paris and depicted in art during the Regency
of the Duc d' Orleans. Gilette Ziegler, The Court of Versailles in
the Reign of Louis XIV, trans. Simon Watson Taylor (London: George
Allen & Urwin, Ltd., 1966), pp. 202, 248-50, 256. Saint-Simon, Louis
de Rouvroy, Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon on the Times of Louis
XIV and the Regency, trans. Katharine Prescott Wormeley, (Boston:
Hardy, Pratt & Co., 1902), I, p. 241.

 

 

 

4"Dieux puissants! quelle etrange paleur De son teint tout a
coup efface la couleur? Esther, que craignez-vous? suis-je pas votre
frére? . . . O soleil! o flambeau de lumiere immortelle! Je me
trouble moiméme, et sans fremissement Je ne puis voir sa peine et son
saississement. Calmez, reine, calmez la frayeur qui vous presse. Du
coeur d' Assuerus souveraine maitresse, Eprouvez seulement son ardente
amitié. . . . Je ne trouve qu'en vous je ne sais quelle grace Oui me
charme toujours et jamais me me lasse. D l'aimable vertu doux et
puissants attraits! Tout respire en Esther l'innocence et la paix.

Du chagrin le plus noir elle ecarte les ombres. . . . Et crois que
votre front préte a mon diadéme Un eclat qui 1e rend respectable aux
dieux méme. . . . Quel intérét, quels soins vous agitent, vous
present? Je vois qu'en m'ecoutant vos yeux au ciel s'adressent.
Racine, Oeuvres completes (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1962), p. 274.

 

5Encyclopedia Selections, pp. 351-2.

 

6Turnell, p. 218.

65

66

7"Mes filles, souteniz votre reine éperdue; je me meurs."
Racine, p. 274.

CHAPTER THREE

FIGURE MOVEMENT AND POSE

The Figure in Transition

La Fosse and the younger painters who worked with him at
Versailles and Trianon during the 1690's developed a new rococo
feeling which anticipated the full development of the rococo in
succeeding generations of French artists from Watteau, de Troy
through Fragonard. They emphasized the sympathetic depiction of
figures who appear preoccupied with thoughts of love, pleasure and
fear. This feeling is partially communicated by having the principal
figure gracefully turn toward the object of attention. In many court
paintings of the 1690's and 1700's, the legs of turning figures
usually bend in the direction of the movement, while the torso may
twist either toward or away from the turn. The head could move in
either direction, depending on the nature of the figure's commitment
to action. This largely circular or serpentine figure movement,
which had been earlier popularized by Michelangelo and the Mannerists,
often implies considerable deliberation on the part of the figure and
assumes that the figure, in the course of time, has travelled through
several moments of action that lead toward a central climax.

Rococo artists and aestheticians used such circular figure

univement to show how a figure has responded in time to a certain

67

68

occurrence within a composition that must obey the unities of time,
and action, as taught by the Royal Academy in Paris. Anthony Cooper
and Jean-Francois Du Bos could write about the classical unities of
time, place and action and yet discuss individual works that show
successive stages of a figure's emotions, as they arrive at a climax
and anticipate a resolution.

At the end of the seventeenth century, de Piles and Antoine
Coypel wrote about the graceful turn of the figure as a beautiful
effect that was given to a dignified action. In his discussion on
the distribution of objects in a painting, de Piles gave attention to
the movement of bodily parts of figures either in a circular arrange-
ment or in opposite directions. Besides exposing the beautiful parts

as much as the action demanded, "

. . . it is additionally necessary
that it (attitude) have a turn, which without abandoning either
verisimilitude or the character of the person, throws agreement into
the action."1 The gracious turn further characterized things in an
elegant manner, choosing to place them beyond what nature and painters
ordinarily have prescribed. Elegance displayed a politesse in the

action "

. . . by giving a turn to the thing, which strikes persons of
a delicate mind."2 Although elegance was customarily found in works
of antiquity and the painted figures of Raphael, de Piles now wanted
to call attention to Correggio, whose drawing may have been inexact
but whose elegance ". . . caused one to admire even the taste of the
design, in the turn that this painter gives to actions; in a word,

Coreggio rarely deviated from elegance."3 De Piles went further to

say that reason, which revealed to the spectator the cause of a

69

painting's good effects, was also to be found ". . . embellished with

"4 Such elegance together

an elegance and an agreeable turn. . . .
with the sublime furnished reason with a sense of harmony and a
guaranty of being favorably received.

Coypel wrote that the gracious turn of a figure was indispens-
able for an art that sought, above all, to please its patrons. He
followed de Piles in asserting that the grand taste for drawing need
not imply precision in detail. This taste gave value to the large
parts of the composition by producing large masses and by avoiding
that which was dry, contrasted, unyielding and interrupted. The
undulating form and that which resembled the flame animated the
contours, producing qualities of greatness, elegance and truth.5
Coypel referred to this undulating and flamelike form as the spirit
of the contour, which he found most often displayed in Correggio and
which could also be found in Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael and the
Carracci.6 The turn was an aspect of grace, which was an embellish-
ment of beauty that won the heart more promptly than a beauty of the
mind and of reason.7 Coypel also found it appropriate to express the
graceful turn in the movement of drapery8 and in the arrangement of a
group of figures.9

The paintings commissioned for Louis XIV's pleasure house at
Trianon between 1688 and 1706 seem to reflect a new interest on the
part of the Coypels, Louis de Boullogne, Michelle Corneille and
Nicholas Bertin in continuous lateral figure movement in the principal

persons represented. In the bedroom of the east wing of the Trianon

palace, one may compare two paintings of Apollo Crowned by Victory by

7O

Noel Coypel, the father of Antoine and the veteran painter at the
palace. The theme of Apollo was an important part of the Ovidian
iconography of the palace houses at Trianon, Meudon and the Menagerie
at Versailles. In the Salon de Repos at Trianon, for example, there
are nine canvases about the youthful Apollo where the warrior god is
being crowned by Victory or attended by Mercury. Apollo is also
depicted in the presence of his lovers Thetis, Hyacinth, Sybil and
Iris. In the bedroom, one finds Apollo and Thetis or Clytia, as
signs of the setting sun. The Apollo and Thetis story, according to
Charles Perrault, architect and designer for the Court, could symbolize
Louis XIV "reposing himself at Versailles after working for the good
of the whole world."10

In Noel Coypel's earlier Apollo Crowned by Victory (Figure 14),
we see seated a youth whose right shoulder leans slightly forward to
balance an upright lyre with his extended arm. The defeated python
lies in the distance, while a mischievous Cupid observes Apollo from
the left. Coypel's painting could be an introduction to Ovid's story
of Apollo and Daphne. "Delian Apollo, while still exulting over his

" writes Ovid, had seen him (Cupid) bending

conquest of the serpent,
his bow with tight-drawn string, and had said: "What hast thou to do
with the arms of men, thou wanton boy? That weapon befits my

shoulders. . . ."11

In Noel Coypel's second version of Apollo Crowned by Victory

 

(Figure 15), painted ten years later, a centrally seated Apollo has
completed a 90 degree turn to face the spectator. Apollo's torso

leans against a rock while his right hand clutches a great bow that

71

 

Figure 14. Noel Coypel. Apollo Crowned by Victory. Oil on canvas,
c. 1696.

72

 

Figure 15. Noel Coypel. Apollo Crowned by Victory. Oil on canvas,
c. 1704.

73

is to his right. The legs are considerably bent and spaced apart to
emphasize the lively lateral movement while the left arm falls in
the direction of the rotation. Only the head violates this left-to-
right movement by boldly leaning away from the turn. As with the
earlier canvas, a victory places a wreath on Apollo's head. The
later canvas shows nyads and young maidens who are visibly charmed by
the figure of Apollo. The earlier image of the stately peacemaker is
now replaced by Apollo the hunter, who is armed with quiver and bow.
Apollo's playful and daring smile, golden locks and sturdy physical
demeanor bring him closer to the Olympian Apollo. He has also become
more of a courtier and less of an arbiter and civilizer, here sur-
rounded by a household of admirers. Coypel's later Apollo figure has
the same large eyes and long blond curly hair as Poussin's Olympian
Apollo who is assembled with the gods. Coypel's figure, however, is
much more animated in his pose and facial expression than that of
Poussin.

Apollo's difficult turn appears to merge into a restful pose.
His left arm boldly crosses his torso to flaunt his shoulder in a
culminating action that attracts the spectator. As with other early
rococo paintings of the same period, lively figure movement is contra-
dicted by a thoughtfulness that leaves the action incomplete. The
two nymphs below also reflect upon their heart-felt sentiments for
Apollo and keep the spectator in suspense.

Noel Coypel has replaced the sharp and accurate contours,
strong Chiaroscuro and crisp drapery of his earlier painting with a

soft surface of flesh and drapery, fluid line and a gentle modelling

74

in light. This soft and playful quality of Coypel's drawing in the
1704 version of Apollo Crowned by Victory accentuates the flat, curvi-
linear and voluminous quality of the figural forms found in many
paintings of Antoine Coypel produced for the gallery of the Palais-
Royal in Paris after 1703.

Antoine Coypel largely attributed this new style to the
paintings of Correggio. Correggio's soft brushwork was preferred to
that of others in the depiction of gentle passions and gracious
objects. Correggio's brush was directly opposed to the bold and over-
drawn traits that Coypel disliked. Correggio's "tender and suave"
brush appeared to flow from a lively and pure source. Correggio and
Rembrandt had the desirable quality of fullness and suavity in their
painted forms, although Rembrandt's brush was a little too brusque.
Noel Coypel's later figure of Apollo generally conforms to what
Antoine Coypel has called in his own style "the light and spiritual
brush." The spiritual touch removed insipid neatness and cold
uniformity from shapes while providing a "fire" that animated the
bodies one chose to represent through drawing and color.12

Antoine Coypel thought that the grand gofit of his own genera-

tion after 1700 was present everywhere in Correggio's paintings. The

grand gofit diminished angles and created undulating and flame-like

 

forms.13 Correggio's gracious, lively and uninhibited figural

movements were those most likely to pique the spectator.14 De Piles
also wrote in his Cours des principes of 1707 that Correggio was the
best example to follow when producing an elegant turn of action that

". . . struck persons of a delicate mind."15

75

It is very likely that Noel Coypel's Apollo figure was
influenced by Correggio's youthful, caped figures in the cupola of
the Cathedral at Parma. Antoine, himself, spent a year in Parma,
where he copied the entire Assumption of the Virgin (Figure 16)
painted on the dome.16 Correggio's caped youths and the bolder
figures of Saint James and Saint Thomas (Figure 17) display intense
and awesome feelings through bold and difficult poses. Coypel's
Apollo is less violent in his movement and more approachable to the
spectator.

The circular movement in Coypel's Apollo figure, which is
found in other post-1700 paintings at Trianon, the Menagerie and
Versailles, was markedly different from that depicted by Jean Jouvenet
and Rene-Antoine Houasse at about the same time. In contrasting

Jouvenet's Apollo and Thetys (Figure 18) to Antoine Coypel's Zephyr

 

and Flora (Figure 19), which were both placed in the country palace
at Trianon, we can discover the essential differences between the
French classical style of Poussin and the early rococo style of the
Coypels. Jouvenet's figure has retained the strong sense of balance
found in Poussin's mature style. As with many painted figures of
Poussin, Jouvenet has caused the actions of Apollo's legs to occur
along distinct planes with the figure's head reinforcing this uniform
movement either to the front or to the side: a movement that is
illustrated in the figures of the three nymphs.17 The movements of
the three figures appear to be frozen in time as the figures come to

rest in perfect balance on their limbs.

76

 

 

Figure 16. Antonio Allegri da Correggio. Assumption of the
Virgin. Fresco, c. 1526-30.

77

 

Figure 17. Antonio Allegri da Correggio. Ascension
of Christ. Fresco, c. 1520-24.

78

 

Figure 18. Jean Jouvenet. Apollo and Thetys. Oil on canvas,
c. 1700.

79

 

Oil on canvas,

Ze h r and Flora.

Antoine Coypel.

Figure 19.

1702.

C.

80

In Jouvenet's painting, the contours are carefully outlined
and the flesh has been given a plasticity that clearly defines the
three-dimensional forms and their relationship to each other and the
space around them.

In Antoine Coypel's Zephyr and Flora, on the contrary, the
two figures are in the process of shifting their balance. The legs
and arms of Flora are moving away from one another as her body accom-
plishes a spiral and serpentine movement toward the descending figure
of Zephyr. The planar arrangement of the figures is largely absent.
The leaning gestures of the heads of Flora and Zephyr further release
the figures from a fixed and easily determined intention. As with
Noel Coypel's second Apollo figure, the contours and surfaces are
smooth, soft and voluminous. Nevertheless, the forms of Apollo,
Flora and Zephyr are flat and do not give the spectator a clear sense
of the space they occupy or the distance between figures that is
discernible in Jouvenet's work. The possible Flemish derivatives of

Antoine Coypel's Zephyr and Flora, as well as Louis de Boullogne's

 

Apollo and Sybil and La Fosse's Venus Asking Arms from Vulcan, all

 

from around 1700, have the same sense of shifting balance as their
later imitations in a graceful circular movement that suggests to the
spectator a continuous and unresolved action.

Noel Coypel's later Apollo figure became a symbol for unremit-
ting enthusiasm, where continuous figure movement is left unresolved
by the upward glance of the eyes in such figures as Michel Corneille's
Apollo, from his painting of the Judgment of Midas (Figure 20) of

1705-6 for the country palace at Trianon. Corneille has depicted

81

 

Figure 20. Michel Corneille. Judgment of Midas.
Oil on canvas, c. 1701-06.

82

Apollo, the musician, playing his lyre. Apollo is twisted around 90
degrees from an audience of listeners to face his lyre on the left
side of the oval painting.

As with Coypel's later Apollo figure, the arms of Corneille's
Apollo move with the torso in order to heighten the opposing positions
of the upper and lower body parts. Both Apollo figures turn their
heads away from the torso and in the direction of the legs.

According to Ovid's popular account of the judgment of Midas,
King Midas, after having washed away his greed for the golden touch,
took to inhabiting woodlands and worshipping Pan. On one occasion,
Pan compared his own music to that of Apollo in the presence of nymphs.
He thereby caused a musical competition to be staged between himself
and Apollo, which the sun god won:

Then Pan made music on his rustic pipes, and with his

rude notes quite charmed King Midas, for he chanced

to hear the strains. After Pan was done, venerable

Tmolus turned his face toward Phoebus (Apollo); and

his forest turned with his face. Phoebus's golden

head was wreathed with laurel from Parnassus, and his

mantle dipped in Tyrian dye, swept the ground. His

lyre, inlaid with gems and Indian ivory, he held in

his left hand, while his right hand held the plectnum.

His very pose was that of an artist. Then with

trained thumb he plucked the strings and, charmed by

those sweet strains, Tmolus ordered Pan to lower his

reeds before the lyre.18
In Corneille's painting, the inspired Apollo is playing his lyre much
to the amazement of a nymph and to the consternation of Pan, who bites
on his pipes. Corneille describes the scene much as Ovid did,
particularly with regard to the description and pose of Apollo. The
canvas was placed in the same room as Venus and Adonis, Venus and

19

Hymen, Venus and Mercury, Art, Nature and Mars.

 

83

In the Menagerie at Versailles, depictions of the musical
inspiration of Arion and Orpheus were likewise associated with games,

amusements and friendship. Louis de Sylvestre's Arion on the Dolphin

 

(Figure 21) takes the theme of music from Ovid's Metamorphosis and

 

like the paintings of Coypel and Corneille shows the torso of Arion
actively turned to the right away from legs that are bent and actively
pointed in the direction of the turn. Sylvestre's figure has arms
that are similarly turned with boldness in the direction of the torso
and a head that leans back over the shoulder, away from the turn.
Arion was a famous musician who lived at the court of Periander, king
of Corinth. After Arion had sung a last song before being thrown
into the sea by mutineering seamen who wanted his lyre, sea nymphs
and dolphins were struck by Arion's beautiful music and saved him from
drowning. Sylvestre depicts Arion riding a great dolphin that, along
with nymphs, marvels at the music. Arion has moved around consider-
ably to our right while his head leans back in the opposite direction
and with great effort as if the figure were deeply moved.

Sylvestre's painting is very close to a contemporary composi-
tion by Antoine Coypel on the same subject, which was lost in the
eighteenth century.20 Francois Boucher also took up the theme of

Arion and the Dolphin. Boucher's Arion Carried on a Dolphin (Figure

 

22) displays the same figural pose in Arion, whose legs, torso, and
head are opposed to adjacent body areas as is the case in the composi-
tions of Corneille, Sylvestre and Noel Coypel. Fragonard's Venus

Binding Cupid's Wing similarly shows body movement along three planes

 

that shift away from one another.{ As with Correggio's figure of

84

 

Figure 21. Louis de Sylvestre.
Arion on the Dolphin.

Oil on canvas, c. 1702.

85

 

Figure 22. Francois Boucher. Arion Carried on a Dolphin. Oil
on canvas, 1749.

86

Saint Thomas, which is located in the cupola of Saint John the
Evangelist in Parma, the rococo figures of Corneille, Sylvestre,
Boucher and Fragonard have a dreamy pose that indicates the charac-
ters' total preoccupation with something that seems abstract to the
spectator. In the figures of Noel Coypel, Sylvestre and Boucher, the
fixed expression of the face and head is strangely inconsistent with
the liveliness displayed in torso and legs. The spectator must pause
before the figure and share in the figure's enthusiasm, which occurs
at a climactic moment in the figure's movement from one position or
pose to another.

One may see considerable figure movement in the oil sketch
for Antoine Coypel's ceiling vault in the Aeneas Gallery at the
Palais-Royal, Versailles. The central plan represents Venus asking
Jupiter to provide arms for her son, Aeneas (Figure 23). On the
opposite side, an animated and regal Bacchus sits up high on the
right side of a rocky ledge. In the legs and torso, he is very
similar to Annibale Carracci's figure of Paris receiving the golden
apple that is located in the Farnese Gallery. On the opposite side
of the ledge, Diana and Apollo are seated near one another. The
figure of Apollo recalls Sylvestre's Arion and suggests some details
from Michelangelo's figure of Jonah on the ceiling vault of the
Sistine Chapel. The poses of Apollo and Diana are similar to those

of the two figures that frame Annibale Carracci's Venus and Anchises

 

in the Farnese Gallery. The figure of Jupiter bears similarity to
Correggio's St. Peter in the Church of St. John the Evangelist, in

the chest, raised arm, bearded face and leg, although the two works

87

 

Oil on

of the Gods.

. Antoine Coypel. Assembl

Figure 23

c. 1702.

canvas,

88

are seen from different points of view. The general theme of Ovid's
Olympian gods and their lovers was promoted in France when Errard,
the director of the Ecole de France at Rome, had students at the
school copy the ceiling of the Farnese Gallery. Many of these
designs were transferred to the ceiling of the Gallery of Ambassadors
in the Luxembourg palace in Paris. Nicholas Loir painted many scenes
at the Luxembourg and the Tuileries that depicted the female lovers
of the Olympian gods. Le Sueur and Vouet also painted subjects from
the Metamorphosis, which made the Ovidian themes and many of their
sources in the Farnese Palace popular, especially when the Coypels

lived in Rome during the middle 1670's.21

The Action of Uncertainty
From the turn of the century, Antoine Coypel, Nicholas Bertin
and others introduced into the figure movement of their principal
characters a sense of ambiguity, as when bending torso may move in
opposition to head and legs. The artists wished to show in the
figure's movement and expression traces of the past moments and
anticipation of the future action. Piles, Shaftsbury, DuBos and

other theorists write about "mixed passions,‘ which frequently imply
inner conflict and anxiety on the part of the figure that displays
seemingly contradictory body movements.

De Piles, as with the early promoters of galant honnéteté,

wrote that depicting the art of conversation had to include a certain

insinuation and persuasion on the part of the main figures.22 Since

 

insinuation implied an indirect and circuitous approach to another's

89

heart, the addressee could display contrary movements of attraction
and repulsion to reflect the devious and sinewy approach of a poten-
tially dangerous performer. The serpentine body movement that is seen
in addressees through the duration of rococo painting is indicative

of the great cost to the character of its preoccupation, suffering or
indecision. As with the circular figure movement popular in the

first decade of the eighteenth century, the contrary and sinewy move-
ment of legs, torso and head was accompanied by an incomplete shift

in balance that lent a degree of mystery and uncertainty to an action
left incomplete.

De Piles believed that contrasts in the movements and in the
placing of body parts gives energy to a figure's expression and adds
life to objects while drawing attention to them:

It (contrast) includes not only the different

movements of the figures, but also the different

situations of members, and all the other objects

that are found together, in kind that it appears

without affectation and only to give more energy to

the expression of the subject. . . . This opposi-

tion well conceived gives life to objects, draws

attention to them and increases grace.2
As with de Piles, Antoine Coypel counselled the young painter to
contrast the pose of figures that are positioned next to one another.
Yet, the painter must also strive to produce a final sense of unity
in the overall arrangement of figures within the composition. He
should display the spiritual turn expressed by a group of figures
that our sensibility causes us to experience, and for which the

painter could scarcely furnish rules.24 Anthony Cooper also wrote

that the turn and balance shift indicates an opposition of intentions

90

in the central figure. "It should appear by the very turn or position

of the body alone that the young hero (Hercules) had not wholly quit-

ted the balancing or pondering part."25

In his article written for d'Alembert's Encyclopedia in 1752,
Montesquieu wrote that contrasts were very important for artists and
viewers since the soul loves to experience variety within symmetry:

While nature requires painters and sculptors to
introduce symmetry into the various parts of their
figures, it demands on the other hand that they
introduce contrasts into the attitudes of these
figures. A foot placed in the same position as
another, a limb that moves like another, these are
unbearable. . . . Moreover nature has not given
us such a posture; she gave us movement and did
not fix our actions and our behavior as if we were
figurines. . . . Therefore, figures must be pre-
sented in contrasting attitudes, especially in
sculpture, which is by nature cold; sculpture can
only express the fire of life through strong
contrasts and a striking position.2

Piles also believes that the study of sculpture, particularly of
antique models, could provide a natural and ready source of grace,

elegance, expression as well as the natural contrasts and ponderation
that one finds in attitudes:

Since it is constant that the antique figures include
not only all that which is most beautiful in propor-
tion; but that they are yet the source of grace,
elegance and the expressions. . . . It is then here
where one ought to place the study of the Model to
which it is necessary to join that of Contrast and

of Ponderation which two together make up the
Attitudes. . . . It is necessary when posing a

Model to look for natural contrasts in an attitude
and cause one to see the beautiful parts.27

Anthony Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftsbury, wrote that it
was important to document the resolution of conflict by showing

opposing actions and feelings in the principal figure of a painting.

91

Shaftsbury's instructions to the Neapolitan painter, Paolo de Matteis,

on the painting of a Judgment of Hercules specify that the painter

 

must represent one instant in time when Hercules, overcome by the
goddesses of Virtue and Pleasure, is about to make a decision as to
which way of life he will follow. Shaftsbury wrote that the artist
may choose to represent an advanced stage in Hercules's decision
process:

According to the first Notion, Hercules must of
necessity seem surprised on the first appearance of
such miraculous forms; he admires, he contemplates,
but is not yet engaged or interested. According to
the second Notion, he is interested, divided and in
doubt. According to the third, he is wrought,
agitated and torn by contrary passions. 'Tis the
last Effort of the vicious one, striving for
possession over him. He agonizes, and with all his
strength of Reason, endeavors to overcome himself.28

The author felt that the last possibility could best represent the
actual resolution of Hercules. Shaftsbury says that it is desirable
to anticipate a fourth state when Hercules is completely won over by
Virtue, but still shows signs of the difficulty of his decision. His
answer is very similar to that of Félibien, Bellori and de Piles and
calls for mixed passions, where the artist may recall the past and

anticipate the future:

To this we answer, that notwithstanding the Ascendency
or Reign of the principal and immediate Passion, the
artist has power to still leave in his Subject the
Tracks or Footsteps of its Predecessor: so as to let
us behold not only a rising Passion together with a
declining one, but, what is more, a strong and deter-
minate passion, with its contrary already discharged
and banished. . . . Again by the same means which are
employed to call to mind the past, we may anticipate
the future. . . . For in this momentary turn or
gesture, Hercules remaining still in a situation
expressive of suspense and doubt, would discover
nevertheless that the strength of this inward conflict
was over.29

92

As with Félibien, Shaftsbury suggested that the head could leave the
"heavier" body behind for a period of readjustment. He also wrote
that the figure should not leave its original state of balance at
this point when an accompanying shift is anticipated by the figure
turn.

Five years later in 1719, DuBos, in his Reflexions critiques,
was intrigued by mixed passions. He held up ancient sculptors and
painters, who, as much as French painters in the Ecole at Rome,
excelled in expression. In Ausonius's account of Timomachus's Medea,
for example, the inner conflict of Medea is beheld by the viewer:

It is on this account that Ausonius extols the Medea

of Timomachus, where Medea was drawn in the attitude

of lifting up her dagger to stab her children. We

behold, says Ausonius, rage and compassion mixed

together on her countenance, and amidst the fury

which transports her to commit so detestable a murder,

we may still decry the remains of a maternal tender-

ness. 0
DuBos believed that contrary passions or movements in the figure
signify conflict at a dramatic moment of struggle, and a moment that
anticipates the future. The Hellenistic Dyinngaul from Pergamon,
for instance, represents a male figure whose bending legs and turned
torso indicate that he is lapsing into unconsciousness. DuBos
mentioned the grinning face and straining arm, which supply valiant
resistance to the approach of death. He then anticipates a slow
resolution to this climactic moment:

It is the picture of a dying gladiator, attentive to

preserve his composure although difficult to him.

Sitting on the ground, he still has enough strength

to support himself on his right arm. . . . He is not

afraid of dying, he only apprehends expiring with a

wry visage. We gaze upon him a long time, expecting
every moment to see him expire.

93

The feeling of inquietude and suspense is also revealed in a sculpture
depicting Papirius and his mother. The mother of young Papirius looks
worriedly at her son, with one hand caressing him while the other
appears contracted. "This a motion very natural," writes DuBos, "to
those who strive to suppress the signs of their inquietude just ready
to break loose." DuBos is also intrigued by the behavior of the son,
who intends to mislead his mother. Although the youth's attitude is
open, solicitous and innocent, there is a feeling of insincerity or
contradiction in a half-formed smile and the inadvertant actions of
hands and face. "Four or five touches which the painter has artfully
drawn on his face and something particularly observable in the actions

' writes DuBos, "bely the openness and sincerity, which

of his hands,'
. . . "32
otherwise appear in his gesture and countenance. DuBos frequently
discovered in the passions attempting to gain dominance, a resolution
that is morally correct. For example, one sees in the countenance of
a mother sculpted by the Hellenistic Theban, Aristides, "the liveliest
sentiment and the most eager solicitude of maternal tenderness" for
her child that attempts to win out over a look of dejection that
. . 33

antiCipates the approach of death.

At mid-century, discerning art critics as La Font de Saint-
Yenne still recognized the importance of mixed passions and the role
of the spectator to read the action with excitement and anticipation
at a climax, well-conceived. In his Reflections on Some Causes of
the Present State of Painting in France of 1747, La Font remarks that

a single event could produce different passions in the heart of

persons animated by diverse interests, and that the same passion

94

"which has several degrees, can modify itself by an infinity of
manners. . . ." The assemblage of different passions in the same face
distinguishes the artist with genius. La Font recalls Piles's example
from the Luxembourg Gallery of Rubens's Birth of Louis XIII, where
Marie de Medici's "maternal tenderness and sweet joy, pierces across
the despondency caused by the difficulty of childbirth."35 La Font
further wrote that the depiction of an action must continue and an
expectation be sustained for the spectator to remain interested in a
painting. He preferred Le Sueur to Restout in the depiction of
Alexander the Great taking tainted medicine from his unsuspecting son,
Philip:

In Restout the bad is accomplished. Alexander has

perished by his (artist's) timeliness, and my tender-

ness can do nothing to save him, and becomes importune

for me, and vanishes. Le Sueur's moment is more

beautiful. I forget myself to take a role in the

action: I could tear the vase from the lips of

Alexander; I am agitated and share all the passions

of those who were present there. In the Tragedy, I

also prefer the moment that Orosman, with knife

raised, runs over to Zaire. I fear the blow will not

go away. . . . Fear has an action more powerful on

our souls than even happiness which it proclaims.36

The sense of struggle that many early rococo paintings convey
through the principal figure's contrapposto also suggests to the
spectator a time of indecision. The figure's suffering or dilemma
results from its being caught between two worlds, or choices. In
Noel Coypel's Hercules, Dejanira and the Wounded Centaur Nessus
(Figure 24), a composition in the Hercules cycle placed between
1697-99 in the Summer Room at the Trianon palace,37 Dejanira's legs

are positioned near the dying Centaur while her torso leans dramati-

cally back toward Hercules. Dejanira's head is similarly pulled back

95

 

Figure 24. Noel Coypel. Hercules De'anira and the Wounded

 

Centaur, Nessus. Oil on canvas, c. 1700.

96

as if she were about to flee from the tragic event. Yet, her head
leans slightly to the side, while her somewhat open mouth and arching
eyebrows indicate surprise mixed with sadness. Dejanira's hip is
positioned near Nessus, while her torso leans away, only to be
contradicted by her head, which gestures toward Nessus, as if in pity.
Ovid tells the story of how the Centaur Nessus offered to carry
Hercules's bride, Dejanira, across the swollen river Evenus. Hercules
then shot the creature through the chest when it attempted to abduct
Dejanira.38 Ovid did not describe Dejanira's abduction, but only
Hercules's response. The artist takes poetic license in observing
the act with fear as well as pity for the imploring centaur, who does
not appear as a violent animal.

In Antoine Coypel's Hector BiddingyAndromache Farewell
(Figure 25), dated 1707-8, we see the same tension in the figure of
Andromache, who leans toward her mistresses and then hangs her head
back in the opposite direction, toward her departing husband. The
surprise and yearning of her expression is restated in the heads of
her mistresses, which are bent forward in astonishment. According to
the sixth book of Homer's Ilipd, Andromache pleads with Hector to
stay. In a lengthy scene, she comes to confront her departing husband
at the Skaian city gate of Troy:

She (Andromache) came to him there, and beside her

went an attendant carrying the boy in the fold of her

bosom, a little child, only a baby, Hector's son. . . .

Andromache, stood close beside him (Hector), letting

her tears fall . . . and spoke to him: 'Dearest, your

own great strength will be your death, and you have no

pity on your little son or on me. . . . Please take

pity upon me then, stay here on the rampart, that you

may not leave your child an orphan, your wife a
widow. . . .39

97

 

Figure 25. Antoine Coypel. Hector Bidding Andromache
Farewell. Oil on canvas, c. 1708.

98

Hector replies that he must fight for his own glory and would fight
to his death before he would see Andromache put in chains:

So speaking he gloriously held out his arms to his

baby, who shrank back to his fair-girdled nurse's

bosom. . . . Then his beloved father laughed

out. . . . Then taking up his dear son he tossed

him about in his arms. . . . He set his child

again in the arms of his beloved wife, who took

him back again to her fragrant bosom smiling in

her tears. 0
We have encountered the moment that Andromache pleads with Hector to
stay with her and their son. She has moved from Hector toward her
baby to outwardly symbolize her attachment to her family just as
Dejanira withdrew toward her honorable husband. Andromache's head
leans back toward Hector to depict her desire that Hector stay, and
her resulting conflict between family and honor. Dejanira's conflict
is between honor and the tender feelings toward an affectionate being
who desired her.

Nicholas Bertin's VertumnusznulPomona (Figure 26), commissioned
for Trianon during the same years, displays a similar dialogue of
attraction and rejection that is displayed by bending torso and
tilted head. The artist dramatically resolves the conflict between
a desirous lover and his unresponsive love. According to Ovid's
story, Vertumnus, a young male deity associated with the changing
seasons, paid a visit to Pomona, a wood nymph who devoted all her
attention and love to her garden and fruit trees to the exclusion of
all male suitors. Vertumnus, disguised as an elderly woman, was
admitted into Pomona's garden one day. He implored her to accept

into her heart an honest, devoted and compatible lover named Vertumnus.

He also told the story of how the proud and hard-hearted princess

99

 

Figure 26. Nicholas Bertin. Vertumnus and Pomona.
Oil on canvas, c. 1706.

100

Anaxeteres was punished for ignoring the young Iphis, her suitor, and
for driving him to commit suicide. Finding that neither the fear of
Venus's wrath nor the devotion of Vertumnus and Iphis could move her,
the deity changed back into his own appearance. "Vertumnus was ready
to force her will," wrote Ovid, "but the nymph, smitten by the beauty
of the god, felt an answering passion."41

Bertin has chosen to show the moment that Vertumnus advances
upon Pomona. The spectator is left to wonder if Pomona has begun to
see the youthful appearance of the deity. The appearance of a charmed
Pomona seems to dramatically follow the nymph's initial rejection of
the lover. Although her feet are positioned near those of Vertumnus,
Pomona's legs lean away from the suitor. Pomona's torso is further
twisted to the side in order to avoid a direct encounter that
Vertumnus's advancing body seems to anticipate. The wood nymph's
head leans back toward her left shoulder in continuation of the
retreating movement as yet as a possible sign of endearment. Pomona's
hand is raised in a gesture of surprise, while the wood nymph's half-
opened mouth and evenly raised brows signify intrigue and possibly
enchantment. Vertumnus is turned toward Pomona with an extended, open
hand in a gesture of persuasion. His mouth and eyes are wide open as
he confidently speaks and leans toward Pomona, perhaps as the process
of change begins. The subtle insinuations of Vertumnus as an honnéte
lover are reflected in the gently twisted torso and tilting head of
Pomona, who appears to hesitate at this time.

In Watteau's Vertumnus and Pomona (Figure 27) of 1715, the

standing disguised suitor, Vertumnus, leans aggressively toward

101

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g!

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at?

 

Oil on

Vertumnus and Pomona.

Antoine Watteau.

Figure 27.

c. 1714.

canvas,

102

Pomona, in a graceful winding bend which implies coercion or insinua-
tion. The pensive Pomona, with head resting against forearm, looks
down toward the foreground as if frozen in thought. Her raised
eyebrows, inflated nostrils and heavy eyelids signal that she has
experienced the first effects of admiration and desire and is trying
to come to grips with her feelings» She has the same expression as

the enchanted woman in Watteau's earlier Rendez-vous. Pomona's

 

slumping shoulders and downcast eyes, however, indicate that she is
still unresolved as to what action to take.

Boucher engraved Watteau's painting and produced three
versions of the story of Vertumnus and Pomona in 1749, 1758 and 1763
(Figures 28, 29, 30). Watteau and Boucher have preferred to depict
the quiet drama of Pomona's gradual enchantment, where the nymph
never actually looks directly at Vertumnus. In all three versions by
Boucher, the tension is eased by the closeness of the two figures and
the relaxed pose of Pomona. The nymph reclines on the ground against
a partially seated Vertumnus, who leans forward in a somewhat tense
pose.

In Boucher's earlier two paintings, Pomona's torso is twisted
in toward the body of Vertumnus in order to create a sense of involve-
ment and intrigue. Pomona's head is tilted to the side, away from
Vertumnus. Pomona's eyes are thoughtfully cast to the side. In all
three paintings, Pomona holds a strap or flower in her delicately
raised hand that manages to come between the heads of the two figures.
The gentle horizontal twisting and then vertical bending of the torso

and the tilting head of Pomona in Boucher's compositions shows a

103

.1131.

 

.,.

Vertumnus and Pomona.

Francois Boucher.

Figure 28.

Oil on canvas, c. 1749.

104

 

Figure 29. Francois Boucher. Vertumnus and Pomona. Oil on canvas,

 

1758.

105

 

. .2.
.~

'

 

 

 

Vertumnus and Pomona.

Francois Boucher.
Oil on canvas, 1763.

Figure 30.

106

double torsion of torso and head. This double movement toward and
then away from the other figure is generally the opposite order of
body movement revealed in the earliest rococo paintings of the Coypels
and Bertin, as well as the later works of de Troy and Watteau.
Boucher's female figures do not show the deep and troubling
reflections that were attractive to early rococo painters. Boucher
always showed more of the male suitor and emphasized less the power
of deception that made the other figure's intentions ambiguous.
Prevost, Marivaux and other novelists of the 1710's and 1720's
wrote about the irrational, mysterious and dangerous nature of love,
which tended to alienate persons from themselves and to subject them
to the torture of irresponsible feelings. Since the passion of love
could not be foreseen by the conscience, it was always discovered as
a surprise.

Writers at mid-century emphasized the refined delicatesse of

 

early innocent pleasures that gave birth to love and which were known
to the conscience. They stressed the excellence of the desired object,
the union of the souls of lovers, and a certain prolonged savoring of
the sensual pleasures that accompanied love."3 New emphasis was
placed upon the bond of love and friendship, which was indispensible
for happiness.

Friendship tamed love in its early stages by forcing an
impassioned lover to come out of his or her abandonment.44 Madame

Lambert wrote that . . . a woman who likes the solid friendship of a

man puts all the vivacity of love in this agreeable commerce."45 As

a sublimated image of ourselves, friendship is an ideal state of

107

protection against the condition of fear and inquietude.46 The
country environment was ideally suited to provide the soul with a
sense of peace and plenitude. It produced contentment at the least
price while restoring unity to the soul.47

Friendship preceded love as a period of endearment when a
woman is persuaded to yield to love."8 The crowning or triumph of

love followed this period of sweetness and friendly avowals. In

Boucher's 1749 oil sketch of Vertumnus and Pomona, trust and confi-

 

dence have been earned. The fact that Pomona's heart is confidently
ready to sustain love for Vertumnus is established by visual symbols
of Venus's crown and Cupid's arrow. Denis Diderot believed that the
depiction of the first offering of love was the most difficult task
for the painter, since one must show that lovers were preparing them-
selves to proceed beyond their innocent feelings. The sinewy posture
of Pomona indicates that the figure has made considerable effort in
coming to terms with Vertumnus in order to accept his offer of love.
It continues the early rococo interest in the lively and intricate
figure pose which could display to the spectator the emotional cost

to the figure of the principal.

CHAPTER III: NOTES

1". . . i1 faut qu'elle fasse voir de belles parties autant
que qui sans la nature du sujet peut le souffrir. Il faut de plus,
qu'elle ait une tour, qui sans sourtir de la vraisemblance, ni du
caractére de la personne, jette de l'agrément dans l'action." Roger
de Piles, Cours, p. 100.

2"L'Elegance en general est une maniere de dire ou de faire
les choses avec politesse, avec agrément; avec choix en se mettant au
dessus de ce que la Nature et les Peintres font ordinairement; avec
politesse, en donnent un tour a la chose, lequel frappe les gens d'un
ésprit délicat. . . ." Ibid., p. 159.

3"Elle se fait souvent sentir dans des ouvrages peu chaties
et négligés d'ailleurs, comme dans le Correge, ou malgré les fautes
contre la justesse au dessein, l'elegance se fait admirer dans le godt
du dessein meme, dans le tour que ce peintre donne aux actions, en un
mot, le Correge sort rarement de l'elegance." Ibid., p. 160.

"Ibid., p. 468.

5"Ce grand caractére du dessein, qui est dans le génie du
peintre, n'est pas aisé a déterminer. Il consiste, cependant, a faire
valoir les grandes parties par de grandes masses, 8 eviter tout ce qui
est sec, tranché, dur et coupé. . . . La forme ondoyante, et celle
qui ressemble a la flamme, anime les contours, y jette du grand, de
l'élégance et de la vérité." Jouin, Conferences, p. 283.

6Ibid.

7Ibid., p. 286.

81bid., p. 288.
91bid., pp. 285, 290.
10William H. Lewis, The Splendid Century: Life in the France
of Louis XIV (Garden City: Doubleday, 1957), p. 273.
11Publius Ovidius Naso, The Metamogphoses of Ovid, trans.
Frank J. Miller (New York: Putnam, 1921), 1:35.
2Jouin, Conférences, pp. 261—2.

13Ibid., p. 285.

141616., p. 287.

15de Piles, pp. 159—60.

108

109

_16Louis Dimier, "Antoine Coypel, 1661 a 1722," in Lesypeintres

francais du XVIIIe siécle. Histoire des view et catalogue des oeuvres,
2 vols., edited by Louis Dimier (Paris: Les Editions G. Van Oest,
1928), 1:98.

 

17Anthony Blunt, Art and Architecture in France, 1500 to 1700
(Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1954), pp. 161-3.

18Ovid, Metamorphoses, 2:131.

 

 

19Schnapper, Tableaux, pp. 124-5.

20Gerard Mabille, "Les tableaux de la Ménagerie de Versailles,"
Bulletin de la Societe de Histoire de l'art francais (March 1974),
p. 99.

21Henri Bardon, "Ovid et le grand roi," Les Etudes Classiques
25 (October 1957), pp. 410-11.

22"Les patetiques (passions) commandent, les moraux (passions)
persuadent; les uns portent le trouble et remuent puissamment les
coeurs, les autres insinuent le calme dans l'esprit." de Piles,
Cours, p. 166.

23Ibid., p. 102.

24". . . ainsi, par un contraste aimable et cependant conven-
able au caractere du sujet, on peut jeter une variété dans l'ouvrage
qui en augmente les agréments sans en détruire l'unité; comme, par
exemple, on peut opposer aux plus aimables nymphs des faunes et des
satyres qui sont assez laids pour faire du contraste mais dont la
laideur enjouée ne laisse pas d'avoir pour ainsi dire une sorte de
grace . . . il faut songer qu'il est dans la forme des groupes une
espece d'élégance de tour spirituel et grécieux que le gofit fait
sentir, et dont l'on ne peut presque donner de regles." Ibid., pp. 102-3.

25Holt, Documentagy History, 2:249.

26Encyclopedia Selections, p. 350.

27de Piles, Cours, pp. 405-7.

28Holt, Documentary History, 2:245.

 

291bid., 2:248.

30Jean-Baptiste DuBos, Critical Reflections on Poetry,

Painting and Music, 3 vols., trans. Thomas Nugent (London: J. Nourse,
1748), 1:305.

311bid., 1:309.

 

110

321bid., 1:310.

331bid., 1:311.

34Ibid., 1:304.

35"Avec les parties du dessein, du coloris, et de l'entente de
la lumiere on est un grand imitateur de la nature, et rien de plus,
quant on ignore au'un meme évenement peut produire des passions
differentes dans le coeur des hommes animés par des interets divers;
et que la méme passion qui a plusieurs degres, peut se modifier d'une
infinité de manieres . . . c'est l'assemblage de plusieurs passions
sur le meme visage, qui ne peut etre rendu que par un homme de genie."
La Font de Saint-Yenne, Reflexions sur quelqpes causes de l'etat
presnet de peinturs a France (Geneva: Slatkine, 1970), p. 67.

361bid., pp. 67-8.

37"Dans celui-ci le mal est fait Alexandre périt par sa
témerité, et mon attendrissement qui ne peut rien pour le sauver, me
devient importun, et s'evanouit. Le moment que a pris LeSueur est
bien plus beau: j'oublie mon personnage pour faire un r81e dans
l'action: je puis arracher 1e vase des levres de ce Prince; je m'agite
et partage toutes les passions de ceux qui y furent presents. 11 en
est de meme dans la tragedie. Le moment on Orosmanne, le poignard levé,
court sur Zaire, est le plus vif: je crains que le coup ne parte . . .
mon intérét pour Zaire cesse." LaFont, Reflexions, p. 8.

38Schnapper, Tableaux, pp. 91-2.

39Ovid, Metamorphoses, 2:235-6.

 

40The Iliad of Homer, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1951), pp. 164-5.

41Ibid., p. 166.

42Ovid, Metamorphoses, 2:355.

 

43Robert Mauzi, L'idée du bonheur, p. 466.

44Ibid.. pp. 476-8.

"51bid., p. 472.

6Pierre Desfontaines, Observations sur les ecrits modernes,
1735-1743, 4 vols., (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1967), 2:331.
". . . une femme, qui l'amitie solide d'un homme, met dans cet agreable
commerce toute la vivacite de l'amour. . . . La veritable amitie est
occupee a sentir les choses preSentes, et a imaginer agreablement pour
l'avenir; elle se fait un devoir d'etre toujours fidele, et d'exercer
une noble et genereuse confiance."

111

7Mauzi, L'idee du bonheur, p. 359.

48See Donald Posner, "The True Path of Fragonard's 'Progress
of Love'", Burlington Magazine, 114 (August 1972), pp. 526-34.

 

CONCLUSION

This study has attempted to show how the earliest paintings
produced in the French rococo style departed from the classical style
of Jean Jouvenet. I have tied the theoretical interest of late
seventeenth-century French writers on art in mixed passions and the
preoccupied figure to the actual sympathetic rendering of principal
figures in early rococo paintings of Antoine Coypel, Noel Coypel,
Charles de La Fosse and Nicholas Bertin. At the turn of the century,
painters and theorists alike displayed an interest in lively and
graceful body movement which could indicate a figure's great enthusiasm
or anxiety toward a visible, dramatic cause. Roger de Piles and
Antoine Coypel emphasized the expressive quality of body language to
move the spectator to a passion comparable to that of the main figure.
They advocated expressions that were simple and yet captivating to the
ordinary polite spectator. The French aristocratic code of the

honnete homme gave additional meaning to the sympathetic and empathic

 

power of the main figure by emphasizing the subtlety and insinuation
of delicate body movement and the reaction of surprise or confusion
that it could evoke in supporting figures.

The earliest rococo paintings present to the spectator an art
of intrigue, where the principal action and diverse figure movements
appear strangely indecisive. The spectator is drawn into the scene by

the closeness of the figures to one another and to the spectator. A

112

113

sense of excitement or restlessness is also offered to the spectator
by way of the flowing, soft contours and the shifting balance of the
figures. The principal figures have shifted their balance from a
restful pose to one of uncertainty and anticipation in order to bring
the spectator back to the anticipated outcome of the encounter. Just
as the main figure reflects on the implications of its unforeseen
feelings, so then the spectator is left to guess what the figure may
do according to the subtle and conflicting gestures and marks of
expression. In the mid-century art of Boucher, figures do not express
surprise at their predicament, but gently contemplate their feelings
of love and duty. Most of Boucher's galant encounters serve as a

test for more serious activity and commitments to love. Nevertheless,
they maintain the early rococo interest in intrigue and uncertainty.
The figures continue to show insinuation and mystery in their
contrapposto movement which often places head and legs in opposition
to the torso. As with the literature of the period, rococo art was

devised as a diversion for the aristocratic and courtly gens d'ésprit

 

and the polite and worldly gens du monde. This paper has attempted to

 

discover a central intention in rococo artists which could justify

their early experiments in body pose and movement.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. Procés-verbaux de
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