Zeuxis Choosing Models from the Beautiful Women of Croton

François-André Vincent, 1789

This history painting by François-André Vincent, dated 1789, shows the ancient Greek painter Zeuxis choosing a model among the women of Croton, a Greek settlement in Magna Graecia. The scene follows an account by the Roman writer Pliny, according to which Zeuxis, seeking to embody Helen of Troy, selected several young women from the city so as to combine in one figure the beauty he considered most perfect. Vincent had already emerged as a leading artist in pre-Revolutionary France from the Salon of 1783, and he showed the work at the Salons of 1789 and 1791. In its neoclassical style, the painting pairs careful drawing with a clear, orderly staging, in which the painter and the gesture of selection occupy the centre of the narrative. It is today in the Louvre, and a smaller version is held by the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University in California.

Painter: François-André Vincent
Date: 1789
Medium: oil paint, canvas
Dimensions: 323 × 415 cm
Museum: Louvre Museum, Paris
Movement: Neoclassical painting
Genre: history painting
Depicts: painter, table, man, drawing

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More works by François-André Vincent

**Germanicus Calms Sedition in his Camp**1768Beaux-Arts de Paris

**Alcibiades Receiving the Lessons of Socrates**1777Musée Fabre

**The Intervention of the Sabine Women**1781Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Angers

**The Ploughing Lesson**1798Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux

**Arria and Paetus**1784Saint Louis Art Museum

**William Tell Overturning the Barque of Gessler**1791Musée des Augustins

**Democritus among the Abderitans**1790Los Angeles County Museum of Art

**President Molé Confronted by Insurgents**1779Louvre Museum

**Henri IV faisant entrer des vivres dans Paris**1783Louvre Museum

**Portrait de la baronne de Chalvet-Souville, née Marie de Broutin, Vincent**1793Louvre Museum