Page 74 - Revolution Republique Empire Restauration

accidental. De Staël describes Corinne as a Grecian
statue specifically to express not only her beauty but
also the timeless power of her art. The fact that this
particular analogy stands out in a work which is
riven with opposing symbols of the modern and the
eternal, the intellectual and the martial, the age of
Cicero and the age of Napoleon - in short the tri-
umph of genius over tyranny, indicates just how
much de Staël’s own self-image informed Vigée-Le
Brun’s portrait. Helen Borowitz has astutely point-
ed out the connection between de Staël’s portrait as
Corinne and Antonio Canova’s contemporary sculp-
tural portrait of Napoleon’s sister-in-law,
Alexandrine Bonaparte as the muse Terpsichore
(Fig. 4).11 Lucien Bonaparte had alienated his pow-
erful brother by his marriage to Alexandrine and in
1804 the newly married couple retired to self-
imposed exile in Italy. There Lucien pursued a study
of art and antiquities, while his wife aspired to
become a poet. Around 1807, as a tribute to
Alexadrine’s literary efforts, Lucien approached
Canova to make a portrait in the tradition of Vigée-
Le Brun’s image of de Staël.12 De Stael had visited
her friend’s Roman studio in 1805, while gathering
material for Corinne and a scene in Canova’s studio
featured in the novel.13 Like Lucien, de Staël was an
exile from Napoleonic France (albeit at the emper-
or’s formal demand) and a friendship formed around
their shared homesickness, love of the antique and
belief in a Parnassian ideal of eternal genius surviv-
ing in the face of tyranny.
It is therefore fitting that fulfilling his commissions
to paint the subject of Corinne au Cap Misène as a spe-
11. See H. O. Borowitz, ‘Two Nineteenth-Century Muse Portraits’, in The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, vol. 66, no. 6 (Sept. 1979),
pp. 246-267.
12. Borowitz, op. cit., p.247.
13. A.-Louise Germaine, Madame de Staël, Corinne, or Italy, (trans. Emily Baldwin and Paulina Driver),
74
cific memorial to Madame de Staël, the figure of the
doomed poetess dominates the composition.
Moreover, Corinne is depicted with the most lucid
sense of contour, her skin and drapery is painted in
the brightest, purest palette and atop the windy cliffs
of the cape she alone appears to be effected by the
elements. Her lyre slipping gently from her grasp,
Madame de Staël in the guise of Corinne looks
upwards and beyond the picture plane, in the same
direction as the ends of her peplum streaming in the
breeze, almost as if to suggest her death and apothe-
osis through the endurance of her writing. After
death de Staël’s daughter Albertine commissioned
Gerard to paint her mother’s portrait (Fig. 5). A
comparison between this relatively conventional
image and Gerard’s evocation of de Staël as the ele-
mental and eternal Corinne shows just how success-
fully Gerard immortalised his friend by combining a
genius for portraiture and his enduring ambitions as
a subject painter with his sensitive and literate com-
mand of the Romantic.
François Gérard was born in Rome, and at the age of
age twelve was admitted to the Pension du Roi and
then studied with Augustin Pajou and Nicolas-Guy
Brenet before entering the studio of Jacques-Louis
David in 1786. Three years later Gérard competed
for the Prix de Rome but lost the honour to his
friend Girodet. Despite subsequent efforts this par-
ticular prize would forever elude him. Eventually
personal and financial troubles forced Gérard to
abandon his formal studies amid the upheavals of the
Revolution. However, his friendship with his former
master, David, enabled him to maintain key connec-