Between the Eye and the Word

The magnificent gown and cloak that spread like an isosceles triangle from the shoulders of a standing female figure in JeanFranpois De Troy's La declaration d'amour (1729) seem to promise a significance we can only try to imagine. The reasons for the cloak within the painting and the context of the painting within its time are filled with problems that would charm Panofsky's and Gombrich's Boa Constructor,' the subtle beast with a hunger for ahistorical conjecture. There would be no problem at all if the dress and the cloak were not so colorfully and spatially prominent, a stiff, dark, ultramarine presence sparkling with orderly explosions of alizarin, magenta, and white flowers. The other colors in the painting are bleached by comparison and seem, especially the pastel pinks, graytempered whites, and ceruleans worn by the two other ladies, to be lifted and mixed from the richer, deeper palette of this triangular spot

Art · Linguistics · Word (group theory · Historical and Literary Studies · Historical Art and Culture Studies · History · Philosophy