Louis XIV and Jason

* This essay is a by-product of a dissertation for Columbia University, prepared with the aid of a William Bayard Cutting Fellowship and an S. H. Kress Fellowship, which assistance I gratefully acknowledge. I owe a debt of gratitude to my colleagues Bates Lowry and Fred Licht for valuable criticisms and suggestions.

Abstract

In the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris is a painting that won a prize in the first Prix de Rome competition organized by the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1663. The earliest work in an important series that includes examples by Fragonard, David, and Ingres, Pierre Monier's insipid Conquest of the Golden Fleece (Fig. 1) is a document of art historical interest.¹ I am calling attention to it because of the circumstances in which the prize originated, for all works entered in the early competitions were to be depictions of subjects alluding to the “actions héroïques du Roy.”² We have come to expect references to Louis XIV in representations of Apollo and Hercules, though there are relatively few discussions in print of the precise meanings in such subjects,³ but other “mythological” scenes generally are held to reflect nothing more than a love of and desire to understand the classics in a highly literary culture. An attempt to understand the allusion to Louis in Monier's painting led to the examination of new material that suggests a fresh approach in interpreting seventeenth century French representations of classic myths.⁴