Ebook: Fragonard's Allegories of Love

Jean-Honore Fragonard (1732-1806) was a French painter whose manner is distinguished by remarkable facility exuberance, and surprising innovation. A prolific artist, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings. The Getty Museum's masterpiece, The Fountain of Love, is part of a series of his most striking late works - the Allegories of Love - exquisite paintings that express intimacy and eroticism. This illustrated book compares and analyzes the compositions, iconography, and sources of the Allegories in the context of ancien regime Preromanticism. The author discusses newly emerging ideas of love expressed in the Allegories and the concept of Romantic love on the eve of the French Revolution. The book accompanies Consuming Passion: Fragonard's Allegories of Love, an exhibition of the artist's work that opens at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute on October 28, 2007, and at the J. Paul Getty Museum on February 12, 2008.