Pygmalion and Galatea
Anne-Louis Girodet (1767-1824) · 1812-1819
A sculptor in a red cloak and a crown of leaves draws back in wonder before his own statue as it comes to life. Galatea stands on her pedestal, still marble white, one hand at her breast, while a small winged Cupid between them guides her other hand toward Pygmalion's. At the left a statue of Venus with a burning altar watches over the miracle; at the right a hazy landscape opens beyond a marble balustrade, and roses lie scattered on the tiled floor. Look at the way Girodet paints the transition from stone to flesh, cool and greyish at the feet, warm and softly lit at the face and breast.
The Milanese collector Giovanni Battista Sommariva commissioned the picture in 1812. Girodet worked on it for seven years and exhibited it at the Salon of 1819, the last major work he showed. Critics were divided by its strange, artificial light, but the artist considered it his masterpiece. The canvas stayed with Sommariva's son and was sold after his death in 1839 to the comte de Chevigné, then descended in the de Luynes family until the Louvre bought it in 2002.
Did You Know? Girodet took seven years over the picture, and it was the last major work he exhibited.
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