Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [179]
The scene may have been conjured by Watteau’s imagination, but it reflects a real form of elite entertainment enjoyed by the ancien régime. A fête galante—an elaborate outdoor party involving role-playing and theater performances—allowed courtiers to try out new identities and gallant seductions. This party is taking place on the island of Cythera, however, believed to be the sacred birthplace of Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of love. That’s why we also see a statue of her, festooned with roses (her signature flower), watching over the couples. Her son Cupid is here, too. His arrows have been laid to rest, his mission accomplished.
Watteau came to painting by way of eighteenth-century Parisian theater, where this theme of a mythic voyage to Cythera was already very popular, especially in the opera-ballet. It’s no accident that his carefully choreographed couples appear to be performing some kind of minuet. A “pilgrimage to Cythera” was also contemporary slang for a trip to the suburb of Saint-Cloud, where on the extensive grounds of the royal palace there (destroyed in 1870), Parisian lovers enjoyed many a fresh-air Sunday outing. A boat departed for Saint-Cloud from the present-day Samaritaine department store (recently closed). Because eighteenth-century subversive writers used Cythera as a phony publication locale, Venus’s mythical isle also became synonymous with the underground libertine press.
That’s why, despite the otherworldly mood of amorous reverie in Watteau’s painting, it was later understood to literally document the degeneracy of a morally bankrupt elite, a class whose most pressing concern appeared to be how long the party would last. In the aftermath of the 1789 Revolution, Watteau’s seemingly apolitical painting looked both reactionary and royal, sparking such an outrage that the Louvre’s curator placed it in storage.
Back in 1717, however, Watteau’s Cythera was a new kind of painting for a new age. Louis XIV’s long absolutist reign had come to a close just two years before. His nephew, Philippe II, was now ruling as regent for the child-king Louis XV. A well-read, tolerant ruler, Philippe reversed many of his uncle’s absolutist policies, ending his wars and closing the worst of the Parisian prisons. Censored books that had once been banned were now in print. Around Philippe’s primary residence at the Palais Royal a more relaxed court life set in, once again in Paris after a long Versailles exile.
His regency’s cultural détente blew fresh air into Watteau’s vaporous painting, which shows people enjoying themselves informally, not following some strict court ritual. That’s also evident in the intermingling of classes. Eighteenth-century peasant blouses and straw hats mix freely with shimmering, aristocratic silks. These textures and delicately colored details are intended to be savored up close, with a relaxed and roving eye. Watteau’s intimate painting is more at home in a Parisian hôtel particulier than in some grand hallway at Versailles.
In stunning contrast, the massive scale of Jacques-Louis David’s The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons (1789—over ten by thirteen feet!—Louvre, Denon Wing, 1st floor, Gallery 75) commands our attention more urgently. Like Watteau, David took his story from the Parisian stage, specifically Voltaire’s Brutus, first performed in 1730. But the two works’ similarities end there. In place of pleasure, we have a tragic story told in a style more cerebral than sensual. This suited the stern moral climate of Paris during the last days of the ancien régime.
David transports us to the home