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Coriolanus Taking Leave of his Family by Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, Anne-Louis

Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, Anne-Louis · 1786

This is Anne-Louis Girodet's "Coriolanus Taking Leave of his Family," painted in 1786 and now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Girodet was eighteen when he made it, a student of Jacques-Louis David, entering the Prix de Rome, the competition that could make a young painter's career.

Look at the hands where the soldier's strength meets the collapsed woman, that is the gestural heart of the farewell. The cold white toga isolates Coriolanus even as his family presses against him. The arch frames the scene like a stage, and the warm light through it is the only softness in an otherwise severe composition.

The jury rejected it. Girodet would not win the Prix de Rome until 1789, three years later, after which he went to Rome to study. He eventually moved beyond David's Neoclassicism into the emerging Romantic style, but this early work already shows a teenage painter reaching for emotional weight most students avoid.

A painting that lost its competition still found its way, two centuries later, into one of the great American museums. Sometimes what fails at eighteen looks different at two hundred.

Details

Look at the weight between them.
Look at the weight between them.
Her body collapses into his.
Her body collapses into his.
Now look at his face.
Now look at his face.
A virtuoso Neoclassical drapery passage , the brilliant white isolates the hero visually and signals moral purity even in disgrace; Girodet at 18 already mastering David's language.
A virtuoso Neoclassical drapery passage , the brilliant white isolates the hero visually and signals moral purity even in disgrace; Girodet at 18 already mastering David's language.
The architectural frame stages this farewell like a proscenium, giving the scene a theatrical solemnity rooted in antiquity; Girodet follows David in using architecture to elevate history.
The architectural frame stages this farewell like a proscenium, giving the scene a theatrical solemnity rooted in antiquity; Girodet follows David in using architecture to elevate history.
Transcript

It was painted for the biggest prize in French art. The painter was eighteen years old. Look at the weight between them. Her body collapses into his. Now look at his face. He lost. The jury rejected it. He tried again three years later and won.