David to Delacroix

de Dorothy Johnson, Dorothy Johnson

In this illustrated study of intellectual and art history, the author explores the representation of classical myths by renowned French artists in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, demonstrating the extraordinary influence of the natural sciences and psychology on artistic depiction of myth. Highlighting the work of major painters such as David, Girodet, Gerard, Ingres, and Delacroix and sculptors such as Houdon and Pajou, this book reveals how these artists offered innovative reinterpretations of myth while incorporating contemporaneous and revolutionary discoveries in the disciplines of anatomy, biology, physiology, psychology, and medicine. The interplay among these disciplines, the author argues, led to a re-examination by visual artists of the historical and intellectual structures of myth, its social and psychological dimensions, and its construction as a vital means of understanding the self and the individual's role in society. This confluence is studied here, and each chapter includes examples chosen from the vast number of mythological representations of the period. While focused on mythical subjects, French Romantic artists, the author argues, were creating increasingly modern modes of interpreting and meditating on culture and the human condition.-- From publisher's description.