Fragonard Events

Antiquity was a wealthy terrain for exploration and especially projection for late 18th century artists, for whom Athenian and Roman heroines embodied different visions of French womanhood.

The exhibition presents visitors with the definitions of romantic love presented by French artists at a time when poets and painters first tried to depict this subject in the most authentic and delicate manner possible. These games of love and chance, played by young people, as shy as they were jealous, all dressed “in the Greek manner,” foreshadow the writings of De Musset, Stendhal, and Flaubert. Purity and truth of feeling were also a way to rebel against a morality that, in the name of public order, sought to prevent French women from becoming the self-aware and free persons who were so admired throughout Europe at the time.

Rome/Athens, the two faces of womanhood during the french revolution Exhibition
From 25th May to 22nd September 2019