Jeroboam Sacrificing to Idols

This is a young man's audition piece. In August 1752, aged 20, Jean-Honore Fragonard won the Prix de Rome with it, the prize that sent the best French students to study in Italy at the king's expense. The subject was not his choice. The judges set it: the Old Testament king Jeroboam building golden idols and burning offerings to them, a story of a ruler leading his people into false worship. It is a demanding, crowded history painting, all gesture and smoke and reaching arms, quite unlike the light, flirtatious garden scenes Fragonard would later be known for. He is visibly reining in his natural softness to prove he could do grand, serious work on command. The Academie kept the canvas until the Revolution swept the institution away.