Lecture 37: Louis XIV and Versailles
seems vulnerable and inert in this painting; the other actors in the troop are
below and behind him. He seems isolated and rather sad; the emotional pull
of this painting is quite strong.Our next example is Embarkation to the Island of Cythera (1717). The title is
almost certainly incorrect; this is a departure, not an arrival. The ¿ gures rise
slowly, as though unwilling to leave. They form a serpentine line down to the
remarkable pageant-like boat. On the other hand, it has been pointed out that
Cythera is a non-place, and the painting is both allegorical and poetic. It can
support both interpretations. Still, pleasure seems not to be anticipated here,
but spent, as the “actors” reluctantly rise and leave. The mood of the painting
is new, when it is compared to Rubens’s Garden of Love (c. 1632–1634). The
full-bodied, full-blooded con¿ dence of the Baroque in Rubens’s painting is
left behind; a new style was being born that would become known as the
Rococo. This is the Baroque with the wind taken out of its sails; saturated
colors give way to pastels, and large forms and pronounced curves become
small forms and gentle curves. The Rococo is a diminuendo of the Baroque.Next we see Watteau’s The Shopsign (or Gersaint’s Shopsign) (1721).
Gersaint’s gallery in the painting is lined with pictures that are inspired
by Venetian paintings of the 16th century and Flemish paintings of the 17th
century, but they are not copies. These paintings represent the schools most
admired by Watteau. On the right, a shopgirl shows a mirror to two men
and a woman, who admire themselves in it. Next to them, an elderly pair
admires a large, oval mythological painting; the woman, who is standing,
looks at the landscape, while the man, who is kneeling, looks just as intently
at the nudes. Just left of center, a man offers his hand to a woman entering
the shop. This woman glances down to her left, where a shop assistant is
lowering a portrait of Louis XIV into a packing case, as we see in a detail
of the painting. Gersaint had named his shop Au Grand Monarche—“at the
Grand Monarch’s”—in homage to the late king, but it is also a farewell to
the entire epoch that had ¿ nally closed with Louis’ death. Once more, and
for the last time, nostalgia infuses Watteau’s work. On the 18th of July 1721,
Watteau died of the tuberculosis from which he had suffered for more than
15 years; he was not yet 37 years old. The 18th century in French painting
had begun—brilliantly but sadly. Ŷ