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An Homage to Gluck
Jean Honoré Fragonard French
Not on view
Artistic genius was often depicted through allegory in the eighteenth century. Here, Fragonard pays homage to Austrian composer Christoph Willibald Gluck, who enjoyed great popularity in Paris during the second half of the 1770s. Gluck, in the form of a portrait bust, presides over the scene, flanked by busts of the ancient poets Homer and Virgil. In the foreground a figure in antique dress sits at a desk. He holds a pen in his right hand and indicates a lyre and a palette with his left—traditional symbols of artistic inspiration.
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