Louis Gueymard (1822–1880) as Robert le Diable

When Courbet showed this at the Salon of 1857, Paris knew the man in it at once: Louis Gueymard, the star tenor of the Opéra, in the role that made him famous. He is Robert in Meyerbeer's grand opera Robert le Diable, caught in the cavern scene where Robert gambles with servants of the devil while his damned father looks on. Sword drawn and cloak thrown back, he seems to be mid-song. The opera's most celebrated moment is the aria in which Robert warns that the craving for gold is an illusion. Courbet, who usually painted stonebreakers and villagers, here took on the glamour of the modern stage, and he made the singer life-size, filling nearly five feet of canvas with a single theatrical gesture.