SPEAKER 1: We're in the Louvre,
and we're looking at a painting by one of David's followers,
one of his students, an artist whose
name is quite long but is usually just
shortened to Girodet. SPEAKER 2: And the
title of the painting is "The Sleep of Endymion." SPEAKER 1: So this
is an ancient myth, and it speaks of a shepherd
who was an ideal beauty. SPEAKER 2: And he had
gotten into a disagreement with the goddess Juno,
who, as punishment, put him into a 30-year-long sleep. SPEAKER 1: But rather kindly,
and to further the story, I guess, doesn't have him age. So he maintains his ideal beauty
during that 30-year sleep. SPEAKER 2: And in
this scene, he's visited by the
chaste goddess Diana. SPEAKER 1: She's the
goddess of the hunt and apparently was
so in love with him that she visited every night. SPEAKER 2: She takes
the form of a moonbeam. SPEAKER 1: Well, she's
associated with the moon, and so that's how
she's personified here. And she bathes him in light. The beam is coming down
from the moonlit sky, but it's got to get through
all of that underbrush. And you'll notice that
there's another figure. That's Zephyr, who
is a personification of the west wind,
who helps Diana by pulling the boughs back so
that her light can bathe him in that extraordinary glow. SPEAKER 2: So we see this
interest in the ideal male nude. We know that David's
followers at this time were looking back at
ancient Greek sculptures of nude athletes and
gods, and there's a real interest
here in that nudity. But the form is softened
so that we don't really have a lot of anatomical
detail in terms of musculature. We see a little
bit in the abdomen. But if we look at the
arms and the legs, they look rather soft and, in
a way, a little bit feminine. SPEAKER 1: Oh,
there's no question. In fact, the entire
painting glows so that all of the clarity
of line has been removed. And I think it's quite clear
that Girodet has been looking at some of the earlier
Italian masters. I'm thinking about
Leonardo's use of sfumato, and I'm thinking about some of
the later mannerist painters. SPEAKER 2: I think we
have, in some ways, the beginnings of
romanticism in a figure that is really languid and sensual,
and there's emotionalism here that's very different from the
severity and the rationalism of David and neoclassicism. SPEAKER 1: No, I
think that's right. In some ways, at least
in terms of temperament, this is a return to
the more lascivious or-- actually, you
can't say lascivious because, of course
Diana was chaste-- but to the emotionalism and
the interests of the heart that had been so much a
part of the Rococo.