Invocation to Love
Medium
Brush and brown wash with graphite squaring lines and underdrawing on cream laid paper
Dimensions
{"sheet":{"height":0.335,"width":0.416},"secondary support":{"height":0.376,"width":0.478}}
Classification
Drawing
Department
Drawings
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Grace Rainey Rogers Fund
Accession Number
1943.657
Tags
About this artwork
Fragonard used gardens as the setting for love and courtship in some of his most important works. One such scene, this drawing depicts a woman pleading for help from a statue of Eros, the god of love. He wears a blindfold, suggesting an uncertain outcome for the woman, as does a Cupid who indifferently leans on an orb nearby. Like other artists in 18th-century France, Fragonard was deeply influenced by historic imagery of the Garden of Love—a pastoral and idyllic contained landscape. He revisite...