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CGFA- David: Mars Disarmed by Venus and the Three Graces



MARS DISARMED BY VENUS AND THE THREE GRACES

Oil on canvas, 10'l]/s" x 8'71/8"
Brussels, 1822-24
Signed: L. David. Brux. 1824
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels


This is the last great picture David painted. He began work on it in 1822 and completed it the year before his death.

David wanted to outdo himself once more. In December 1823, he wrote: "This is the last picture I want to paint, but I want to surpass myself in it. I will put the date of my seventy-five years on it and afterwards I will never again pick up my brush."

The subject is taken from Creek mythology. Mars and Venus were the names given by the Romans to Ares and Aphrodite, the god of war and the goddess of love. The legend of their love affair corresponds to the charming idea that Beauty seduces and disarms Force. Aphrodite had a child, Eros, also called Cupid, and then had three girls, the Graces-Euphrosyne, Thalia, and Aglaia. The attributes of Mars were the lance and the sword, while Venus was represented by the turtledove, among other attributes. The three Graces were traditionally portrayed nude, entwined, or holding each other by the hand and dancing.

David was faithful to the legend, even down to these details, but his primary intention was to compose a sort of allegorical apotheosis. The scene takes place in a celestial Olympus, high above the famous mountain, in the midst of clouds. The faces are graceful and the feminine bodies very beautiful, especially that of Venus, which might be considered the most exquisite female nude ever painted by David. Mars looks very much like Leonidas, although his pose is much less contemplative.

The coloring is translucent and pearly, like painting on porcelain. The attitudes are conventional, the setting elaborate.

It was first exhibited in Brussels and then sent to Paris. Thiers, a journalist at the time, praised the color which "astonishes by its brilliance." "Never," he wrote, "has colored fabric been so perfect, so finely executed." He also praised "the beautiful lines," but he wondered "if the painting did not mark the end of the path on which David had set out." He added that "if one does care for style to turn into academic pretentiousness, for drawing to turn into an imitation of statues, for color to be pushed to a tiresome clash of hues, to a studied transparency and the sheen of glass," then, "one will consider David's painting to contain some beautifully executed parts, but perhaps dangerous to propose as a model and, finally, the last word of a system that was good when it served as a corrective, which it can no longer be when it tends towards excesses that need to be corrected in turn."

But David's former pupils flocked to see the painting and were full of admiration. The exhibit brought in, after expenses, 13,000 francs, which means that there were more than 10,000 visitors, an enormous number for the time.

How could anyone not be moved by this famous old man's farewell to painting- this is an enchanted world dedicated to grace and beauty, to their supreme victory over matter and force. What does it matter if the composition is theatrical! The smiles are lighthearted, the attitudes graceful, the gestures exquisite- and the female nudes are quite simply sublime. The aging painter dreamt a final dream of beauty, more chaste than in his youth, but physically more perfect than ever, and this is how we shall remember him.


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