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FRANÇOIS-PASCAL-SIMON, BARON GÉRARD Rome, 1770 - Paris, 1837 The Parents of Psyche consulting Apollo’s oracle, c. 1796 Black chalk, pen and brown ink, brown wash 184 x 140 mm Born in Rome of French parents, Gérard began his career in the workshop of the sculptor Pajou and then frequented the Brenet workshop before joining David in 1786. In 1789, Gérard failed for the Prix de Rome and no longer competed. After his father’s death the following year, he accompanied his mother in Italy, where he stayed from 1791 to 1793. On his return, thanks to David, he obtained a studio in the Louvre and avoided enlisting in the revolutionary armies. His Bélisaire (1795) and then the portrait of his friend Isabey (1796) were much noticed at the Salon, but it is above all to Psyché recevant le premier baiser de l'Amour (1799) that he owes his great success. He thus won the favour of the First Consul, who commissioned an Ossian évoquant les fantômes au son de la harpe for Malmaison. Although his fame was established by his portraits of the dignitaries of the Empire, Gérard did not give up history painting. La Bataille d’Austerlitz was followed by compositions to the glory of the Bourbons, such as L’Entrée d’Henri IV à Paris (1817) and Le Couronnement de Charles X à Reims (1826). Later, returning to an anacreontic inspiration, he painted Daphnis et Chloé in 1824 and Hylas et la nymphe the following year. Knight of the Legion of Honour since 1802, Baron of the Empire, professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, member of the Institute, Gérard received the Cross of the Order of Saint Michael from Louis XVIII and became the first painter of Charles X. For Louis-Philippe’s historical gallery in Versailles, he painted colossal figures and, just before his death, completed the Pantheon pendants, commissioned in 1820. As early as 1784, the publisher Pierre Didot (1761-1853) sought a complete break with typography and illustration in favor during 18th century. In his Epître sur les progrès de l’Imprimerie , he explained to the French Academy his concern for a "renaissance" of the art of typography and decoration in the sense of a great purity and simplicity as applied by Bodoni, his Italian rival, to the royal printing house in Parma. Years later, after a few essays, he published a series of large folios printed with a new typeface, the Didot, and illustrated by the greatest historical painters of his time - Fragonard, Prud’hon, Girodet and Gérard -, bringing noble painting into the book and giving illustration a new dignity. These were the famous editions of Virgil and Horace (1798 and 1799), followed by Les Amours pastorales de Daphnis et Chloé by Longus in 1800 and Racine’s Complete Works in 1801. In 1797, Didot published the first of his "new" books, Les Amours de Psyché et de Cupidon by Jean de La Fontaine. In this text, published for the first time in 1669, La Fontaine displayed an astonishing talent as a prose writer and, by combining gallantry and sauciness, turned to the myth of Beauty and the Beast, famous since antiquity. This book is illustrated with five drawings by Gérard, engraved by Bénédicte-Alphonse Nicolet. Four of these drawings were exhibited at the 1796 Salon but, with the exception of one drawing kept at the Getty Museum, they are currently lost. Our leaf is the first thought for the drawing in the Getty Museum, the first illustration of the text: Les Parents de Psyché consultent l’Oracle d’Apollon (fig. 1)1. The parents of the beautiful Psyche, desperate for the absence of a suitor for the young girl, come to consult the Oracle of Apollo. The latter announces that Psyche is destined for a "cruel monster who tears hearts apart, [...] feeds on sighs, bathes in tears [...]". It is in fact Love, but Psyche will not know this until later. In the drawing of the Getty, the dramatic intensity of the oracle's announcement of the cursed union of the beautiful mortal is at its height. Psyche, in despair, falls into the arms of her mother who looks up at the statue of Apollo. The father, on the right, looks sternly at his daughter while Cupid, in the background on the left, is watching the scene. If the general layout of the composition is already found, we can note many differences in the details between our sheet and the Getty Museum drawing, especially in the architecture of the temple. Executed with sharp strokes of black stone, reworked with pen and brown ink and then with brown wash, our drawing is well representative of Gérard's way of working: a first idea very removed, then, later, probably on the suggestions of Didot who wishes for his works a complete break with the 18th century, a drawing of great purity. 1 Pen and black ink, brown ink, black wash, white gouache, 189 x 146 mm (inv. 92.GA.108). The corresponding print by Nicolet was published in J. de La Fontaine, Les Amours de Psyché et de Cupidon, Paris, Didot, 1797, between pages 24 and 25. 1. .

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