Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson French School, 1767-1824

 

Anne-Louis Girodet was born in Montargis in 1767 into a middle-class family, close to the royal family whose estates they administered. His father was the son of a royal notary, bailiff and judge. In 1747, he bought a position as auditor of the Orleans apanage. In 1758, he acquired the lands and seigneury of Le Verger, with which he endowed his eldest son, who thus took the name Girodet du Verger, while Anne-Louis the younger son was in turn called Girodet de Roussy, after a small acre of woodland forming part of this property.

 

An important figure in the young painter's family circle was the physician Benoît François Trioson, also attached to the service of the House of Orleans and resident in Paris. Charged by his father with overseeing Anne-Louis’ education, he played a very important role in the young artist's life after his father's death in 1784. After the death of his wife and children, Dr. Trioson adopted Girodet in 1809, who then took the name Girodet de Roussy-Trioson and inherited his adoptive father's estate in 1816.

 

A natural predisposition for drawing led the teenager to enroll as a pupil at the Royal Academy of Painting at the age of sixteen, in 1783. After the death of his father (in 1784), Girodet joined the studio of the painter Jacques-Louis David, a real incubator of talented artists, where he rubbed shoulders with painters such as Drouais, Gros, Gérard, Fabre, Hennequin and Isabey. The young Girodet was one of the main painters of the second version of the Oath of the Horatii, commissioned by the Count of Vaudreuil.

 

After several unsuccessful attempts, Girodet won the Prix de Rome. Eager to free himself from David's tutelage, he left for Rome in April 1790, arriving on May 30 after a 6-week journey. It was in Rome that Girodet painted one of his first masterpieces, Le sommeil d'Endymion. This highly ambiguous and erotic painting was later analyzed by some art historians as a declaration of its creator's latent homosexuality.

 

Revolutionary unrest spread to the venerable Académie, and the boarders decided to remove the fleurs-de-lis from the pediment of its headquarters in the Palazzo Mancini, replacing them with an allegory of the Republic. This decision ignited a firestorm and the Académie was ransacked by the Roman mob on January 13, 1793, leading to the dispersal of the boarders and to its closure. Girodet and his comrade Péquignot left Rome for Naples.

 

Revolutionary unrest spread to the venerable Académie, and the boarders decided to remove the fleurs-de-lis from the pediment of its headquarters in the Palazzo Mancini, replacing them with an allegory of the Republic. This decision ignited a firestorm and the Académie was ransacked by the Roman mob on January 13, 1793, leading to the dispersal of the boarders and to its closure. Girodet and his comrade Péquignot left Rome for Naples.

 

Arriving in Naples on January 18, 1793, Girodet spent thirteen months there, one of the most difficult periods of his life. His health deteriorated rapidly; the symptoms of syphilis contracted from Roman prostitutes were compounded by those of tuberculosis. Treated by Doctor Cirillo, who provided him with medical certificates allowing him to pursue his stay, the seriousness of his condition forced him to spend the winter of 1794 in Naples. Girodet left the city for Venice on March 31, 1794.

 

To characterize the artistic output of Girodet's early years, let’s quote part of Sylvain Bellenger's conclusion in his contribution to the 2005 Louvre exhibition catalog: "Less than a guardian of classicism, Girodet seems to us to be its excess [...]. His art, with its excess of literary intent, learned refinement and often dazzling virtuosity, reflects the mannerism peculiar to the end of any artistic school. [...] Disowned by David for his weirdness, Girodet was saved by it: "originality excites curiosity", as he wrote in his notebook.

 

2. The place of portraiture in Girodet's Neapolitan artworks

 

Few examples of Girodet's Neapolitan production have survived. A Portrait of a Neapolitan in pencil was reproduced in the Louvre exhibition catalog[1] and the Musée de Montargis holds the Portrait of a Neapolitan Girl reproduced above.

 

In 2024, we sold the portraits of our model's two parents, André and Marguerite Lefèvre de Revel, which came from the same private collection and had also been painted by Girodet at the start of his Neapolitan sojourn in 1793.

 

Monsieur Lefèbvre was probably a French merchant based in Naples, and his wife's maiden name, Germain, indicates that she must also have been of French origin. They seem to have had only one daughter (our model), born in Naples on November 24, 1783, who is shown here at the dawn of her 10th anniversary.

 

In Naples, Girodet also executed a painting depicting Erasistrate discovering Antiochus' illness, a piquant wink offered to the good doctor Cirillo of which a few copies are known even though the original has disappeared, and a few rare landscapes that testify to the influence of the landscape painter Jean-Pierre Péquignot (1765 - 1804).

 

One of these, a drawing in the Musée Magnin depicting a Landscape with a Woman Frightened by a Snake, is of particular interest to us, as it evokes the same atmosphere of edenic, overabundant and slightly distressing nature as the background to our portrait.

 

3. Description of our portrait and related artworks

 

Our model's pose is very unexpected for a portrait: seated on a chair inspired by the Antiquity, she is turning her back to the painter, a fruit in her hand. She seems to have suddenly turned around towards the viewer, as if she had heard an animal. Her gaze, directed towards the ground, does not meet that of the viewer. Her smile adds to the ambiguity of the scene. In the background, a lush vine unfurls the sinuosities of its trunks, reminiscent of the heavy curls of her hair. The very dark brushwork of the vine leaves contrasts with the touches of light provided by the white highlights on the model's body, evoking a stormy, slightly stifling atmosphere.

 

The presence of the fruit in our young girl's hand is highly intriguing, and leads us to believe that this portrait is an allegorical portrait. The most obvious interpretation would be that of a representation of Eve, but the age of the model (just under 10) and the leaves around the fruit (which we think is more likely to be an orange) seem incompatible with this direct interpretation.

 

Knowing Girodet's taste for classical culture and literature, it seems more coherent to us to think that our young girl is depicted as one of the Hesperides, the nymphs who lived in an orchard where they guarded the tree of golden apples, the fabulous fruit that Hercules would have to steal to accomplish his eleventh labor, which is often represented in the form of an orange.

 

The attention paid to the depiction of our young girl's hair, and the almost lifelike character of some of her locks, also leads us to see an ophic allusion, which superimposes on the image of Hesperides that of Medusa, the maiden whose hair was so beautiful that she dared to compete with Athena, who punished her by changing her hair into snakes and modifying her gaze.[2]

 

Another interpretation of this "golden apple" held by our young girl would be to link it to the story of Paris, the Trojan prince responsible for awarding the golden apple abandoned by the goddess Eris to its recipient, i.e. "to the most beautiful". It could thus be seen as a tribute by the artist to the beauty of our young girl.

 

Portraits of children are rare in Girodet's work, and this is one of the earliest known. The very characteristic elongation of the girl's arm can be related to that of Benoît Agnès Trioson looking at Images in a Book, a painting in the Musée Girodet of Montargis which has been exhibited at the Salon of 1798.

 

A final word on the life of our model (whose name is written in old-fashioned handwriting on the old cardboard background): on July 16, Year XII (July 5, 1804), in Nice, she married Antoine Burel, a military man born on July 14, 1773, who would end his career as a lieutenant-colonel in the engineering corps. A 1796 graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique, he is known for the reconnaissance mission he carried out in Morocco from May 1808 to May 1810.

 

4. Framing

 

Like the two portraits of her parents and the portrait in the Musée Girodet in Montargis, our portrait is presented in a molded cherrywood frame, probably made in the same Neapolitan workshop as the other three.

 

Girodet 1767 - 1824 - catalog of the exhibition held at the Musée du Louvre - Editions du Louvre 2005

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