Museum Masterpieces: The Louvre

hunt and has decided to bathe with her attendant before a meal. Unlike the
voluptuously heavy women of Rubens and even Lemoyne, the bodies of
Boucher’s Diana and attendant are trim, athletic, and lithe without losing
some of the charming layers of softer skin. It is little accident that this seems
to have been Renoir’s favorite painting throughout his life, and we must
remember that, as a child, he lived in the crowded slum that was torn down
for the enlargement of the Louvre in the Second Empire.
The Rape of Europa is a subject painted by scores of artists in the history
of Western art, and the Louvre itself has at least 30 paintings of the scene.
Boucher painted the subject in several formats at different moments in his
career, but the Louvre’s large and fully realized version was owned by the
king himself. We see the mortal Europa, a princess of exceptional beauty,
who is spied by the Greek god Jupiter while she plays at the beach with the
ladies of her court. Jupiter assumes the form of a pretty white bull, speaks
softly to her, and persuades her to mount him before he takes her, crying, into
the water to the island of Crete. Boucher shows us all the dramatic tension in
the scene with the wind-whipped foliage at the left, the strong surges of the
sea and its tritons, and the interplay of clouds and sun. It is a wonderful romp
through mythology with Boucher with no need for Latin or Greek!
Featured Masterpiece:
Figure de Fantasie:
Portrait of the Abbé de Saint-Non or Inspiration,
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1769.
W ith this painting, we see the agitated, spontaneous
performance of an artist who wants us to virtually witness
him in the act of painting. The colors are mixed as he rushes to
complete a section of the sleeve; the skin tones of the face don’t
blend but are, rather, juxtaposed touches of wet paint applied on
wet.The inscription (on the reverse) tells us that the painting
represents the Abbé de Saint-Non and that it was painted in an
hour! Scholars believe that the inscription is not in the artist’s hand
but was added later.
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