Nymphe et Satyre

A nymph sleeps naked at the edge of a dark ravine while a satyr lifts the cloth that covered her. Watteau painted this oval scene to hang above a door. The satyr is a god in disguise: Jupiter, come for Antiope.

The story behind the painting

The painting is known as Jupiter and Antiope and also as the Satyr and the Sleeping Nymph. Wikipedia says it was probably painted between 1714 and 1719; Wikidata gives 1716. It was meant to be placed over a doorway. Most art historians think it was a commission for the banker Pierre Crozat, made around the time Watteau painted oval Seasons for Crozat's dining room, at the urging of his teacher Charles de La Fosse, but this has never been proven. Watteau made at least three sketches to work out the satyr.

What to look for

The oval is about 73 by 107.5 cm. The naked Antiope lies across the foreground, head at the left, one arm under her head and the other hanging into the abyss below. Her pale, warm body lights up an otherwise dark, earthy picture. Behind her, the satyr, crowned with vine leaves for Bacchus, lifts the cloth and leans over her hips, licking his lips. His tanned, muscular body fades into shadow. Their curving limbs repeat the oval of the frame, broken only by her dangling arm.

Meaning and intent

In the myth, Jupiter takes the form of a satyr to surprise and seduce Antiope, daughter of King Nycteus of Thebes; she later bears the twins Amphion and Zethus. Nymphs and satyrs were favourite opposites for artists: the nymph pale, idealised and close to Venus, the satyr dark, strong and goatish. Watteau drew on versions of the subject by Correggio and Titian, and took the arrangement of the satyr's arms from a Descent from the Cross by Anthony van Dyck. He returned to the sleeping figure as a statue in The Elysian Fields of 1719.

Legacy

The painting's early history is unclear, especially before 1857. One theory linked it to a sale by Watteau to Léopold Philippe d'Arenberg in 1717, but this is now largely rejected. In 1857 it appeared at the sale of Théodore Patureau's collection as a former possession of Prince Paul d'Arenberg. Baron James Mayer de Rothschild bought it in 1864 and sold it in 1868 to Louis La Caze, who died the following year and left it to the Louvre, where it still hangs. A lost image of the whole composition served as the model for an engraving by the Comte de Caylus.