1781
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Invocation to Love is a 1781 by Jean Honoré Fragonard, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This painting shows a woman in a frilly pink dress kneeling before a statue of a blindfolded Eros. She reaches up, hoping the god of love will answer her plea. Nearby, a lazy Cupid barely glances at her while leaning on a globe. Fragonard loved painting playful garden scenes like this one. Here, love feels uncertain—not warm or sure, but almost cold. The statue’s blindfold says it all: love’s outcome is a mystery. Fragonard’s light brushwork makes the scene feel both soft and sharp. If this feels familiar, check out more of his work at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Fragonard used gardens as the setting for love and courtship in some of his most important works. One such scene, this drawing depicts a woman pleading for help from a statue of Eros, the god of love. He wears a blindfold, suggesting an uncertain outcome for the woman, as does a Cupid who indifferently leans on an orb nearby. Like other artists in 18th-century France, Fragonard was deeply influenced by historic imagery of the Garden of Love—a pastoral and idyllic contained landscape. He revisited the specific image seen here multiple times, in two oil paintings (Musée du Louvre and private…
This drawing contains squaring—a grid underlying the image—suggesting it's a smaller drawn replica of a related oil painting.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard was born on 5 April 1732 in Grasse, the son of a glover, and moved with his family to Paris in 1738.
See the richer artist page
