Jason

The Paris Salon of 1865 is remembered now for a scandal, Manet's Olympia, a modern naked woman staring back at the viewer. In the same rooms hung this, pulling hard in the opposite direction. Moreau took the oldest kind of subject, Greek myth, and worked it up in dense, jewelled detail. Jason, leader of the quest for the golden fleece, stands victorious over the slain dragon that guarded it, one foot on the beast, while the sorceress Medea presses close behind him, the phial of the potion that won him the fight still in her hand. Moreau, who exhibited rarely and painted slowly, loaded every surface with ornament, a column wound with a garland, a small bird perched near Jason's shoulder.