In this beautifully illustrated study of intellectual and art
history, Dorothy Johnson 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,
David to Delacroix 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, Johnson argues, led to a
reexamination 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 in depth
for the first time here, and each chapter includes rich examples
chosen from the vast number of mythological representations of the
period. While focused on mythical subjects, French Romantic
artists, Johnson argues, were creating increasingly modern modes of
interpreting and meditating on culture and the human condition.