ゼフュロスに愛撫されるフローラ

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.