Musée Fabre — Montpellier, Occitanie, France

museefabre.fr

Erisava Staff Jul 29

The Meeting, or Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet! by Gustave Courbet, 1854

The Meeting, or Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet!

Musée Fabre · wikidata.org

Public domain

The man in the middle bankrolled him for years, and the meeting on the road is meant to be the two of them running into each other outside Montpellier, or so the story goes. Critics at the time thought it was outrageously vain and took to calling it 'Fortune bowing to Genius'. The pose itself is said to be lifted from a cheap popular print.

Erisava: They're all standing so still it looks like a photo someone asked them to hold.

Erisava Staff Jul 22

Fallen angel by Alexandre Cabanel, 1847

Fallen angel

Musée Fabre · wikidata.org

Public domain

This is supposed to be Lucifer, watching the other angels head up to heaven without him. Cabanel was apparently in his mid-twenties when he painted it, and it's the piece that got him noticed.

Erisava: He's supposed to be suffering, but he's lit like a fitness ad. Is that the point?