Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners (1887)

Alexandre Cabanel: Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners

The notion of Cleopatra as the archetypal femme fatale of Antiquity has long appealed to the imagination. She ruled over a mighty empire, was a mistress to both Julius Caesar and his successor Mark Antony, and eventually took her own life after the Battle of Actium.

Like many 19th-century writers and artists, the French painter Alexandre Cabanel drew inspiration from the ancient Egyptian queen. It was, after all, the era of Egyptomania, as archaeological finds, scientific discoveries and voyages of exploration were generating an unprecedented interest in the culture of ancient Egypt.

In this canvas, Queen Cleopatra looks on as her servants test a poison on some prisoners. She is seated in luxurious surroundings, adorned with animal hides, textiles and plants. At her feet lies a leopard, a symbol of regal power. A servant keeps her cool with a fan.

Cabanel rendered Cleopatra and her surroundings in accurate, colorful detail. The figures in the background, where the horror takes place, are represented slightly smaller and in a hazier fashion. The painting is a typical example of 'l'art pompier', a derisory term for academic painting from the second half of the 19th century. [Konincke Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp]

Rebecca and Eliezer (1883)

Alexandre Cabanel: Rebecca and Eliezer

Love's Messenger (1883)

Alexandre Cabanel: Love's Messenger

A Page (1881)

Alexandre Cabanel: A Page

Octave Mirabeau wrote that Cabanel had "a hand accustomed to the conjuring up of forms, to tracing distinctive lines, the soul of a Prix de Rome winner with the eye of a photographer. Such is M. Cabanel." Indeed, along with Gérôme, Cabanel was a determined opponent of the Impressionists, remaining faithful to the academic manner until his death. The subject of the present work may be seen as a conscious statement to this effect: with its stylistic affinities to the fifteenth century, Cabanel was perhaps paying homage to the Renaissance masters he so admired. [Sotheby’s]

Portia from The Merchant of Venice (1881)

Alexandre Cabanel: Portia from 'The Merchant of Venice'

Catharine Lorillard Wolfe (1876)

Alexandre Cabanel: Catharine Lorillard Wolfe

In the mid-1870s, both Catharine and John Wolfe commissioned works from Cabanel, who had made his reputation as a painter of genre scenes and portraits of Second Empire aristocrats. He ordered a variant of Cabanel’s most famous composition, The Birth of Venus, while she commissioned a Biblical figure painting and the present portrait. She sat for Cabanel in Paris, wearing a white satin evening dress that was the height of French fashion in 1876. Contemporary viewers admired the sitter’s elegant hands and her stance as that of "a hostess receiving guests…full of flexibility and pliant, willowy grace, entirely American in its distinction and sensitive responsiveness." [Metropolitan Museum of Art]

Echo (1874)

Alexandre Cabanel: Echo

In Greek mythology Echo is the beautiful nymph who falls in love with Narcissus, a handsome youth who loves only his own reflection. Because of her endless chatter, Hera condemns Echo to a life of silence except for repeating what others say to her. Still in love with Narcissus, Echo retreats to a remote grotto and pines away until only her voice is left. [Metropolitan Museum of Art]

Pandora (1873)

Alexandre Cabanel: Pandora

Cabanel, a professor of painting at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, specialized in portraits of "High Society." Here, he depicts the Swedish soprano Christine Nilsson as Pandora, the woman in Greek mythology who opened a forbidden box, releasing all the troubles that afflict humanity. [The Walters Art Museum]

Alexandre Cabanel (1871)

 Alexandre Cabanel: Baroness Paul von Derwies

  

Alexandre Cabanel: Giacomina

The Governess (1865-70)

Alexandre Cabanel: The Governess

The Death of Francesca de Rimini and Paolo Malatesta (1870)

Alexandre Cabanel: The Death of Francesca de Rimini and Paolo Malatesta

In The Death of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta, Cabanel shows us Dante’s murdered lovers draped across a sofa while their assailant, Francesca’s husband, peers out at them from between the curtains at the back of the room, grasping a bloody sword. An abundance of richly patterned fabrics, delicately colored and accented with shining bits of gold, envelops and surrounds the nearly motionless figures. Cabanel gives us no action to speak of and no gaze directed at us.

The critics of 1870 perceived that Cabanel’s Death of Francesca substituted surface effects for narrative structure. Ménard regretted that the incoherent vivacity of Cabanel’s colors negated dramatic unity, while Castagnary called The Death of Francesca a deplorable package of fabrics. Similarly, Lafenestre complained that the first impression of the painting, instead of conveying grief and terror, suggested “a spread of fabrics in the display window of a store.” After sorting out the scene, Lafenestre continued, one finally noticed the timid drops of blood, but still the figure of the husband, compressed between curtains at the back of the composition, failed to respond properly to the logic of the composition: “he has the air of a sightseer coming to take a look rather than a murderer fleeing.” Likewise, Astruc characterized the painting as all skin and surface and careful execution, remarking that Cabanel paid more attention to fabrics than flesh and wondering why he emphasized “the ridiculous figure of the husband, stuck like a piece of cardboard between two curtains.” [Dianne W. Pitman, Bazille: Purity, Pose, and Painting in the 1860s, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998, pp. 23-24]

Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Paradise (1867)

Alexandre Cabanel: Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Paradise

The Birth of Venus (1863)

Alexandre Cabanel: The Birth of Venus

The Birth of Venus was one of the great successes of the 1863 Salon where it was bought by Napoleon III for his private collection. Cabanel, a painter who received numerous awards throughout his career, at that time played an important role in teaching at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and in running the Salon. Typical of his virtuoso technique, this painting is a perfect example of the popular and official artistic taste of the period. In the eclectic spirit of the Second Empire, he combines references to Ingres with an 18th century style of painting.

Cabanel took as his subject a famous episode from classical mythology when Venus is born of sea-foam and carried ashore. This theme, very popular in the 19th century, provided some artists with the opportunity to introduce eroticism without offending public morality, under the pretext of representing a classical subject. For Cabanel, the mythological theme is indeed a pretext for the portrayal of a nude figure, which, though idealised, is nonetheless depicted in a lascivious pose. Emile Zola denounced this ambiguity: "The goddess, drowned in a sea of milk, resembles a delicious courtesan, but not of flesh and blood – that would be indecent – but made of a sort of pink and white marzipan". The writer was thus deploring the use of a pale, smooth and opalescent palette.

That same year, Edouard Manet's Olympia caused a scandal. The subject of the two paintings is identical: a reclining nude. But the calm assurance with which Manet's subject stares back at the viewer seems much more provocative than the languid pose of Cabanel's Venus. [Musée d'Orsay]

Florentine Poet (1861)

Alexandre Cabanel: Florentine Poet

Nymph and Satyr (1860)

Alexandre Cabanel: Nymph and Satyr

Othello Relating His Battles (1857)

Alexandre Cabanel: Othello Relating His Adventures

Othello Relating his Adventures does not illustrate a scene from Shakespere’s play, but rather an event Othello describes in a speech in scene 3 of Act 1. In the event described, he relates the story of his life from year to year: his battles, sieges and fortunes that he has encountered. Cabanel shows him in the midst of his narration, leaning on the balustrade of a Venetian palazzo’s marble portico. He wears Moorish clothing and stands with his right arm outstretched and his left resting on the hilt of a long sword. Desdemona, seated on embroidered pillows, listens to him enraptured, leaning on the knee of her father, Brabantio, who gazes upward at Othello. The costumes, rug and draperies are luxurious. The color is warm and sumptuous. Hidden from their sight in the lower left is the malevolent Iago, intently listening to Othello’s narrative. The design leads the eye from Othello to the figure of Desdemona and her father and then down to Iago. Desdemona’s light drapery makes a beautiful pattern that catches the eye and leads it back to Othello. Unfortunately, the light on Othello’s lower left leg is too pronounced for its place in the shadow and distracts from the figure of Desdemona. [Stephen Gjertson Galleries]

The Glorification of Saint Louis (1853)

Alexandre Cabanel: The Glorification of Saint Louis

Fallen Angel (1847)

Alexandre Cabanel: Fallen Angel

Premiering this fall on the CW :)

Envoys of the Senate Offer the Dictatorship to Cincinnatus (1844)

Alexandre Cabanel: Envoys of the Senate Offer the Dictatorship to Cincinnatus

Cabanel was one of the leading exponents of French "Academic" painting. He played a major role in getting the "Salon" to refuse to show the works of Impressionist painters.