Strength Conquered by Love

On 13 January 1793 a crowd in Rome attacked the carriage of Nicolas Hugou de Bassville, the envoy of the new French Republic, and he died of his wounds the next day. Palazzo Mancini, the seat of the French Academy, was set on fire, and many French artists left the city. Bénigne Gagneraux, who had made his career in Rome, was one of them. He went to Florence and spent his last years there, and this small canvas, dated to around 1793 or 1794, belongs to that exile. Its subject is an old one, love taming strength, and here strength takes the form of a lion. Winged cupids climb over it and play around it, and the great animal lets them. Lions turn up elsewhere in Gagneraux's work as well, among them a lion hunt now in the Uffizi, in the city where he painted this.