La Marchande d'Amours

1763 · Musée National du Château, Fontainebleau

genre

Vien had about 60 students, including Jacques-Louis David, in his studio in the Rue Montmartre in Paris. Although he encouraged his students to paint directly from the life model and to study Renaissance artist, his work suggests that he did not always follow his own advice. This painting treats the subject as a piece of veiled erotica: the image of the Cupid held by his wings promising sexual fulfillment.

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About the Artist

Joseph-Marie Vien

1716 – 1809

French painter. A winner of the Prix de Rome , he was in Rome at a time (1743-50) that coincided with excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii, and in his lifetime he gained a great reputation (partly self-promoted) as a pioneer of the Neoclassical style. He was enthusiastic for the ideas of Winckelmann, but his classicism was of a very superficial kind, consisting of prim and sentimentalized anecdote or allegory with pseudo-antique trappings ( The Cupid Seller, Château de Fontainebleau, 1763). Nevertheless, he gauged the taste of the time well and had a career of exemplary success, becoming director of the French Academy in Rome (1776) and First Painter to the King (1789). He was made a senator by Napoleon after the Revolution, a count in 1808, and was buried in the Pantheon. David was his most important pupil. His son, Joseph-Marie the Younger (1762-1848), was also a painter, mainly of portraits.

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