Portrait of Madame de Staël as Corinne on Cape Misenum

This portrait by Élisabeth Vigée Lebrun shows Germaine de Staël dressed as Corinne, the poet and artist at the heart of her novel Corinne, or Italy. The writer herself commissioned the work, and the painter finished it between 1807 and 1809, completing it in Paris after she could not do so at Coppet. The sitter appears about to sing for the last time before Oswald, her beloved, who is set to marry another woman; she holds a golden lyre and wears a concentrated, inspired gaze. According to the painter's memoirs, she achieved that expression by asking her model to recite tragic verses, which she barely listened to, so absorbed was she in capturing the look. One detail sets the painting apart from the novel: the landscape. The Cape Misenum of the story gives way to the waterfalls and temple of Tivoli, probably at De Staël's request. The work stands out for its colour and its attention to the sitter's inner life, beyond mere likeness, something contemporary critics read as an excess of feminine sensibility compared with the usual focus on male heroism. The writer's dissatisfaction led to a second version by Firmin Massot, and after her death François Gérard treated the same subject in a more solemn, history-painting manner.

Painter

Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun

Date

1808

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

140 × 118 cm

Museum

Museum of Art and History Geneva, Geneva

Genre

portrait

Depicts

Germaine de Staël

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