Flore caressée par Zéphyr

Gérard finished this in 1802, under the Consulate, when Napoleon was still First Consul and wealthy Paris was rediscovering luxury after the Revolution. The subject is old and light: Flora, the Roman goddess of spring, caressed by Zephyr, the warm west wind, her pale body set against a dark ground. Gérard had trained under Jacques-Louis David, the Revolution's severe official painter, yet that republican sternness has melted here into something almost weightless. It was one of a series made to decorate the private mansion of Napoleon's finance minister, Gaudin.