JEAN-BAPTISTE GREUZE
(1725 – Tournus – 1805 – Paris
Presentation of a Vestal Virgin
Oil on canvas
16-9/16 X 13-15/16 in.
Private collection.
Provenance:
Perhaps sale, Paris, 29 April 1863;1 sale, Paris, 15 March 1973, lot A
Bibliography:
Martin and Masson 1906, no. 36; “Conseils aux acheteurs: Aimez-vous Greuze?” Connaissance des arts, June 1973, p. 149; B. de Rochebouet, “L’age d’or du dessin,” Le Figaro, 23 March 2001, p. 17; “Dessins: l’envolee des prix,” Le Figaro Patrimoine, u May 2001, p. 34.
With this harrowing image of youth and old age, Greuze joined the company of his contemporaries fascinated with the lore of the Vestal Virgins-Jacques Gamelin
(1738-1803), Lagrenée, Franicois Lemoine (1688-1737), Jean-Marc Nattier (1685-1766), Jean Raoux (1677-1734), Pierre-Charles Tremolieres (1703-1739), Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744-1818), Vien-but his image is imbued with a troubling, dark sexuality that has its closest parallels in Goya and Henry Fuseli (1741-1825).
Relying on correct archaeological precedents, as he had with Septimius Severus and Caracalla (fig. 13), Greuze has depicted here a Vestal Virgin in her pristine nudity being unveiled (or veiled) by what appears to be a hag but might be the Pontifex Maximus. This high priest supervised the lives and activities of the six Vestal Virgins, including sentencing those guilty of unchastity to living entombment. The sacred fire that the virgins tended, Ovid’s ignis inextinctus, burns at the right in an elaborate neoclassical gueridon that could have been designed by Philippe Caffieri (1714-1774). Since the Temple of Vesta-near the Forum, at the foot of the Palatine-could be entered solely by the Vestal Virgins and the Pontifex Maximus, the appearance of its interior could be only a matter of conjecture. Greuze properly represented it as a round structure, as Ovid described it in the Fasti:
“That is brought about by its round shape. The form of the temple is similar; there is no projecting angle in it; a dome protects it from the showers of rain….Long did I foolishly think that there were images of Vesta; afterwards I learned that there are none under her curved dome. An undying fire is hidden in that temple.”2
Greuze rendered the architectural setting here with considerable panache, as he did in a number of other late works.
In 1761 Greuze had exhibited at the Salon a Portrait of Madame Greuze as a Vestal Virgin, provoking Diderot’s hilarity: “That one, a Vestal Virgin! Greuze, my dear friend, you are pulling our leg.” In his description of that lost work, Diderot cited one detail that recurs in the present drawing: “the drapery brought over the head with long folds,” just as he had two years earlier, in discussing Nattier’s Vestal Virgin: “a drapery with great folds, brought over the head and exposing part of the brow.” 3
Closer in date and spirit to the present drawing is the enigmatic Death and the Maiden (fig. 177). Within a similarly elaborate interior, a young woman strongly resembling this Vestal Virgin is depicted about to meet her untimely and gruesome end, restrained by a hooded figure who is now Death itself.4 Another frontal female nude enveloped in transparent draperies appears as Modesty in Greuze’s Psyche Crowning Cupid (see fig. 20), also of about 1790. The ewer and basin in the foreground of that picture are the same as appear in Death and the Maiden.
1. Marrin and Masson 1906 described this
drawing as appearing at that auction, but the
only sale on that date listed by Lugt did not
include it. See F. Lugt, Repertoire des Catalogues
de ventes publiques, The Hague, 1964, III,
no. 27307.
2. Ovid, Fasti, trans. Sir James George Frazer,
Cambridge MA and London 1951, p. 34r.
3. “Cela, une vestale! Greuze, mon cher, vous vous
moquez de nous…cette draperie ramenée a
grands plis sur la tete.” Diderot Salons, 1, p. 134.
“Une draperie a grands plis, ramenee SUI’ la tete et
derobant une partie du fi’ont. ” Diderot Salons, 1,
p. 65.
4. La Jeune Fille et la mort, brunsh with brown
and gray ink wash over black chalk on white
paper, 495 x 631 mm (19 9/,6 X 24 ’31t6 in.),
Rauen, Musee des Beaux-Arts (inv. no.
975.4.1307). See J. Vilain in La Donation
Suzanne et Henri Baderou au musee de Rouen,
Peintures et dessins de l’Ecole Franraise, Paris
1980, pp. n3-14, fig. 7; F. Bergot, Le Musée des
Beaux-Arts de Rouen, Rauen 1989, pp. 63, 67;
The Loves of the Gods: Mythological Painting
fi’om Watteau to David, exhib. cat., Paris et al.,
1991-92, pp. 525-27, fig. 6.