The Love Lesson

By 1716 the grand public manner of Louis XIV's reign had gone quiet. The old king had died the year before, and a lighter, more private Paris was taking over its salons and gardens. Watteau caught that mood in what came to be called the fete galante, an afternoon of young people flirting and making music out in a park. Here a man tunes a guitar while a girl in yellow holds a songbook, and beside her another breaks off roses to scatter, all of them gathered under a marble nymph curled on her pedestal. It looks like pure idleness. The panel beneath it says otherwise. X-rays found that Watteau worked over the door of a nobleman's carriage, and the old coat of arms is still there under the greenery, two unicorns and the crown of a marquis showing faintly beneath the lovers.