This monumental painting by the artist and theorist Jean-Joseph Taillasson, tells the poignant tale of Hero and Leander, taken from an ancient poem.
The Greek text recounts how every night, a young Egyptian man called Leander swims across the Hellespont, or Dardanelles, in what is today Turkey, to see his love, Hero, one of Venus’ priestesses. She would light a torch at the top of the lighthouse to guide Leander to her safely. But one stormy night, the winds blew the light out and the young man drowned. When Hero saw the dead body, she killed herself. Taillasson, born in Bordeaux and a member of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, presented this work at the salon in 1798 after having spent a long time working on his composition.
Indeed, he made several preparatory drawings and also wrote a poem about the young lovers. In his work, the painter opposes Hero’s diagonal movement with the horizontal lines formed by Leander and the horizon. Although the expressions and exaggerated poses of the lovers are Neoclassical in style, the painter also uses a Pre-Romantic style for his tumultuous rendering of the sea.
This work once decorated the walls of the Palais Bourbon in Paris before being deposited, in 1989, at the Bordeaux Museum of Fine Arts. Taillasson follows in the footsteps of Shakespeare, Rubens, Liszt or Victor Hugo, who were also captivated by these two romantic heroes with a tragic fate.
