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Your galleryInvocation to Love
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Follow the woman’s streaming drapery as she lunges toward the statue, then find the small Cupid leaning on a globe at the far left.
A young woman rushes to the statue of Eros, god of love, and begs for his help, but the god wears a blindfold and a small Cupid leans on a globe nearby without interest. Fragonard often set scenes of love and courtship in gardens, and he returned to this image in two paintings and another drawing. Faint graphite squaring under the wash suggests this sheet is a smaller drawn version of one of the paintings.
Brush and brown wash with graphite squaring lines and underdrawing on cream laid paper · Sheet: 33.5 x 41.6 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art · Rococo
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Invocation to Love
- Artist
- Jean-Honoré Fragonard (French, 1732–1806)
- Date
- c. 1781
- Medium
- Brush and brown wash with graphite squaring lines and underdrawing on cream laid paper
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 33.5 x 41.6 cm (13 3/16 x 16 3/8 in.); Secondary Support: 37.6 x 47.8 cm (14 13/16 x 18 13/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Grace Rainey Rogers Fund
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Cleveland Museum of Art
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.