Watteau's Pilgrimage to the Isle of Cythera: The Fête Galante That Invented a Genre

Submitted to the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1717 as his morceau de réception, Jean-Antoine Watteau's Pilgrimage to the Isle of Cythera now hangs in the Louvre in Paris. The Academy had no category for aristocrats conversing amorously outdoors, so it coined one — fête galante, or gallant party — to admit him. Set on the sacred Greek island where Aphrodite was said to be born, the canvas places a Neoclassical statue of the goddess at right, pink roses climbing its base as emblems of love's beauty and thorned difficulty. Three foreground couples map courtship's stages: a seated pair in intimate whisper, the man's blue cape embroidered with a heart pierced by an arrow, signifying flirtation; a gentleman lifting a lady in a brown velvet jacket edged with white lace, signifying surrender; and a third couple, his arm about her waist, her backward glance and small smile read by some scholars as reflections on surrendered virginity, signifying consummation, with a small dog at their feet standing for fidelity. At the far left, a golden barge trimmed in pink roses and fabric, a winged angel on its prow, waits to carry the lovers back to the profane world — a vessel some link to the pleasure barge Cleopatra sailed when she met Marc Antony in 41 BCE. Watteau (1684–1721), the most influential French painter of the 18th century, shaped French painting through the 18th and 19th centuries with his vibrant color and bold brushwork.