Velléda

In 1809, when Corot was 13, François-René de Chateaubriand published Les Martyrs, a prose epic about Christians under the Roman Empire. One of its best-remembered figures is Velléda, a Gaulish druidess who falls in love with a young Christian officer and then takes her own life. According to the Louvre, the title of this canvas was inspired by her. Nothing else in the painting insists on the story. A young woman with long dark hair and a thin band across her head stands in a wood, in a dark sleeveless bodice and a long grey skirt. One hand rests at her breast, the other on the open pages of a book laid on a stone block. The Louvre dates the canvas only between 1850 and 1875. It is signed at the lower right and stands 83 centimetres high.