What signs does a swan have?…

The exhibition of the engraving competition for the Prix de Rome has just opened at the School of Fine Arts.

The following topic was proposed:

“At the moment when, under the thick shade of the bank, she was preparing to bathe, Leda saw coming towards her, gliding on the water and quivering with desire, Jupiter, the master of the gods, in the form of a great swan dazzling with whiteness…”

The subject is not a wonderful novelty, it goes back to Greek antiquity and mythological pornography. It has an advantage common to all classical subjects, which allows painters, engravers and sculptors to represent completely naked men and equally naked good women. The School of Fine Arts, completely resistant to the idea that men and women have been able to wear clothes since the beginning of the centuries, is a very bad school for the many artists who must later specialize in the prospectus tailors, clothing catalogs and the political statue in a frock coat... And even for those who find work in the memorial monument. Because the soldier is dressed.

Obviously, in art, everything is convention. The contemporary patriots of the painter David were poorly dressed, but they were dressed. Which did not prevent David, attached to the traditions of the School, from painting a prodigious number of naked patriots, taking civic oaths or flying to the aid of the homeland... It is true, what David claimed , that these patriots were Roman patriots; but the Roman patriots, from what we have heard, wore clothes like the patriots of Year II.

The subject proposed this year to the young engravers competing for the Prix de Rome is more pleasing to the eye and less questionable from the point of view of clothing.

We cannot imagine Leda dressed, any more than any other lady in Greek mythology. All the ladies of Greek mythology appear permanently under the thick shade of a flowery bank, preparing to take a bath and waiting for Actaeon, Paris or this animal of Jupiter. It is difficult for the most original artist to make an effort at originality when painting, sculpting or engraving Leda, or Diana, or Amphitrite, or Truth, or Fortune, or Motherhood.

But the execution of Jupiter as a swan and as the text depicts him presents certain difficulties, even for an animal painter.

“Sliding on the water”, very good… But “quivering with desire”. By what signs do we recognize that a swan is quivering with desire? The gods have strange fantasies, while they can easily satisfy their whims without employing the subterfuges and disguises necessary for poor men... It was enough for Jupiter to present himself to Leda in all his supernatural majesty, and to tell her : “I am the good god of good gods. » Thus he had much more chance of being loved, and for himself, than by metamorphosing into a stupid bird unless Leda was a strangely vicious woman, unless Leda was a very ordinary woman, having a taste for stupid birds. We also understand that Jupiter, in love with the heifer Pasiphaé (we must still admit this strange postulate of the god in love with the cow), was momentarily transformed into a bull; it was the only way to achieve his ends... And if the masters of the School of Fine Arts had proposed the following subject: “Pasiphaé grazes on the grass of a fresh meadow. Jupiter approaches in the form of a bull quivering with desire”, the competitors in the engraving competition would have easily made themselves understood…

But I hope... I hope that they were content to give us a nice picture where we see a swan gliding across a lake towards a lady, with the idea that the lady will give him bread.

All the same, when in doubt, I would be careful, for fear of an overly conscientious interpretation, to take my daughter to see the engraving exhibition for the Ecole des Beaux-Arts competition.

G. DE LA FOUCHARDIÈRE.