endymion's moonbath: art and science in girodet's early masterpiece

Leonardo

Endymion's Moonbath: Art and Science in Girodet's Early MasterpieceAuthor(s): Barbara StaffordSource: Leonardo, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Summer, 1982), pp. 193-198Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1574677 .

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Leonardo, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 193-198 1982 Printed in Great Britain

0024-094X82/030193-06$03.00/0 Pergamon Press Ltd.

ENDYMION'S MOONBATH: ART AND SCIENCE IN GIRODET'S EARLY MASTERPIECE

Barbara Stafford*

Abstract - This study interprets the natural 'effects' contained in Girodet's 'Sleep of Endymion' against the background of certain scientific discoveries made during the latter part of the eighteenth century. French atmospheric investigations confirmed the existence of a transient ocean of air subject to tides because of lunar influence. Aerial perturbations produced light-related phenomena such as electricity (Endymion's 'charged' form), phosphorescence (his body glowing in the dark) and caloric (a metaphorfor the erotic heat ofpassion). Alterations in the moon's phases were thought to bring about palpable changes in the weather. Moreover, not only does the moon shine by reflected light but the earth, in turn, illuminates the moon's surface-a convenient image for the reciprocity of Endymion's and Diana's ardor. Further, my argument suggests that the view from above-so conspicuous in the later 'Ossian'-is already presaged here. Ultimately, certain overriding Romantic themes are seen as implicit in the painting's imagery: the doctrine of elective affinity, the chemical notion of dissolving, the aesthetic concepts of ekstasis and stillness, and the fecund identification of love with death.

It is within the context of the late eighteenth-century belief in the profoundly necessary interaction between art and science that this study will reexamine the masterpiece of A. L. Girodet's Italian period. The 'Sleep of Endymion' (Louvre) was exhibited at the Salon of 1793 and, more than any other work, was responsible for the young man's early success.

The history of its inception and evolution is well-known and need not be repeated here. [1] Certain statements by the artist, however, are significant for our purposes and should be noted. In a letter to his foster father, Dr. Trioson, Girodet provides the following description of his conception: 'Eros parts the branches of the trees beneath which he is lying in such a way that the rays of the moon illuminate him through the opening and the rest of the figure remains in shadow. I do not think it is an unworthy idea, as to the effect, it is purely ideal and therefore difficult to render. The desire to make something new and which does not smack of the pedestrian has perhaps made me attempt [something] beyond my capabilities, but I wanted to avoid plagiarisms' [2] (italics mine). We should bear in mind the emphasis placed on the creation of the effect and the desire to invent something new. In a subsequent letter to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the artist adopts a more modest tone, stating that the effect of the painting is the result of the rather skilful manual execution and, as to the question of the distribution of light and shade, he now claims not to have invented it but to have witnessed it in nature [3].

A more lyrical account of the work, most probably also composed by the artist, is found in the second edition of Noel's Dictionnaire de lafable. Importantly, here, the scientific flavor of the text increases in proportion to the erotic warmth of the description. Eros disguised as Zephyr pulls aside the branches of foliage: 'and by the gap which it leaves open, a moonbeam in which breathes all the warmth of passion expires on the mouth of the beautiful sleeper. The reflection of the moon and the tint of the objects and even of the body ofEndymion leaves no doubt as to the hour of the night when the action takes place, and to the presence of the goddess....' [4] (italics mine).

Thus we learn that the reflection of the moonlight, the tint of the surrounding objects and of Endymion's roseate body not only reveal the hour of the night when the action takes place but bear witness to the incorporeal yet nonetheless tangible presence of the goddess.

*Art historian. Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC 20565, U.S.A. (Received December 2 1980, revised manuscript received 1 July 1981)

In turning to an actual examination of the painting (Fig. 1), it seems that what is visually stunning and affectively sensational about it is how the voluptuously abandoned hunter-with his face upturned receptively to greet the approaching ray of moonlight- [5] appears to be physically interacting with the beam as it penetrates the moist atmosphere. No stoically chill Davidian hero: Endymion's skin is flushed precisely where it is raked by moonlight.

Girodet may perhaps have been prompted to create his startling image because of a striking plate, published in 1781, in the Abbe de Saint-Non's popular Voyage pittoresque, ou description des Royaumes de Naples et de Sicile (Fig. 2). Its forceful novelty and insistence upon a single beam of light falling upon a recumbent figure from afar may well have given rise to the unusual effet. Perhaps the juxtaposition of light with death may even have suggested analogies with sleep and dissolving.

To my knowledge no scholar has pointed out that, according to the artist's conception, we are contending in this work not only with a single ray of light 'that comes to rest on the mouth of the beautiful sleeper' but, much more significantly, with the dissolution of that very beam as it glides along his side to be reflected (in a crescent-shaped arc) back to its source. To anticipate my argument, this optical effect is central to a proper understanding of the painting.

Among the many triumphs of French science during the decade of the 1770s can be counted the efflorescence of meteorology, one of whose chief aims was to study the fugitive effects that occur in the atmosphere. Jerome Lalande, an author with whose work Girodet was most likely familiar, voices a popular and universal belief of the time, namely, that the atmosphere is the source of the most sapping maladies that afflict mankind. Like his French counterpart J. F. Daniell, and English meteorologist, remarks on the oppressive, langor- inducing effect of oppressive weather and 'sultry' days and nights [6].

When we remember Girodet's connection with numerous physicians during his student days and his own hypochondria- attested to in many complaining letters from Italy to Dr. Trioson- [2, II, 365; 399] we can imagine how the humidity produced by condensing evening dew may have suggested to the artist the scientific cause for Endymion's torpor.

The moist, almost underwater, appearance of the painting's atmosphere-a condition it shares with the later 'Ossian' (Malmaison)-can be connected with the then common figure of speech, 'an ocean of air'. As in the terrestial sea, so in the air

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Barbara Stafford

Girodet, 'The Sleep of Endymion', oil. Paris, Louvre 1793 (Photo: Courtesy Documentation photographique de la Reunion des mus6es nationaux).

above it, a tide was believed to roll along the atmosphere and rise upwards twice every twenty-four hours. Significantly, it was the moon that was specifically held responsible for producing currents in the aerial ocean. Hence the atmosphere is changeable and not stationary [7].

Analogously, it should be noted that Noel in his Dictionnaire de la fable [4, II, 712], observes how the winds-Zephyr included-were deified by the early Greeks in an effort to pacify 'the terrible forces of the air'. Hence, poets since Hesiod have written of them as volatile gods, the very analogues of passion. It is in this spirit, then, that Girodet's mercurial and malicious Zephyr-Amor, who personifies a gust of wind, is depicted as visibly buffeting the oak and laurel leaves and the evening glory's blossoms to permit passage of Diana's perturbing ray [8].

The visual accuracy in Girodet's recording of the strange, glacing light that streams through the painting may reflect an awareness of related natural phenomena that were being extensively studied by scientists of the time. Thus Endymion's obviously 'charged' body-both absorbing and radiating, stimulated and stimulating to produce 'effects'-is the logical creation of an era which believed that an immense ocean composed of an electric fluid circulated throughout the atmosphere [9].

Nevertheless, a more significant and growing mania, cresting precisely at the moment of the 'Endymion's' inception, was that

for phosphorescence. Innumerable tracts devoted to this nocturnal phenomenon and composed both by popular and serious authors appeared from the 1770s onward [10]. To be sure, bodies glowing in the dark had fascinated man from time immemorial. Phosphorescence, from phosphorus meaning 'bearer of light', was a phenomenon that attracted special scrutiny in antiquity. Aristotle mentions the occasional and ephemeral nightly glitter of the sea, fish, and even sponges; Pliny the Younger describes similar 'natural wonders'. During the Middle Ages, Albertus Magnus knew that a diamond shines in the dark when rubbed. With the advent of a more rigorous scientific age in the seventeenth century, Bacon, Newton and Boyle tried to comprehend rationally the 'drinking and soaking up of light'. But it was not until the last quarter of the eighteenth century that an international scholarly community was alerted to the complexity of this luminous manifestation; one that had engaged the empirically inclined British artist, Joseph Wright of Derby, already in the early 1770s [11] (Figs. 3 and 4).

By this time, phosphorescence was believed to be produced in five ways: through irradiation (irradiatio, the Roman insolatio, sunbath or lightbath), external heating, internal heating, voluntary separation and mechanical precipitation [12]. It is the first category which is most relevant to Girodet's picture.

Significantly, concentrated moonlight as well as sunlight was believed to give rise to such an effect [13]. In a lambent state, a certain transparency comes to characterize substances such as

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Endymion's Moonbath

Fig. 2. J. H. Fragonard/Fessard, 'Vue d'un caveau decouvert a Pompeii pres du Vesuvie', etching. From the Abbe de Saint-Non, Voyage

pittoresque, I, P1. 89, 1781 (Photo: Courtesy Library of Congress).

Fig. 4. Peter Perez (Percy Burdett), 'Sketch for the Alchemist', sepia. Derby Museum andArt Gallery, ca. 1771 (Photo: Courtesy of the Derby

Museum and Art Gallery).

Fig. 3. Joseph Wright of Derby, 'Alchemist in Search of the Philosopher's Stone, Discovering Phosphorus', oil. Derby Museum and Art Gallery,

early 1770s (Photo: Courtesy Derby Museum and Art Gallery).

marble which under ordinary conditions appear opaque. This notion hypothesizes that the pale light we see originates not only from the surface of the phosphorescing object but emanates from deep within it. This view is allied with the late eighteenth- century fascination for powers and energies. For, it was thought that if light was to penetrate profoundly into an organic structure it must have been strongly attracted and, con-

comitantly, if it was suddenly reflected, then the attraction must have been transformed into centrifugal energy.

The mention of 'powers' reminds us that it was Newton who, in the Principia, that is, the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687), and the Opticks (1704), most cogently defined for the eighteenth century the heretofore dual and contradictory nature of matter as belonging to the same level or status of being. Because of the enormous impact of his natural philosophy and the premise that good, empirical science does not exclude from the fabric of the world and the furniture of heaven the immaterial or transmaterial, such forces became firmly wedded to his equally insistent espousal of the reality of hard, corpuscular particles. Thus, Newton's picture of a double structure of nature, material as well as immaterial, was to prove prophetic, as Alexandre Koyre has wonderfully shown [14].

Matter, according to the archetypal physicist, had an essentially granular organization. Composed of small, gritty motes interspersed with vacuum, it was seen to possess attributes already discerned by the corpuscular philosopher's: extension, hardness, impenetrability, mobility-with the added, and highly significant, fillip of inertia.

But it is to the second component of this new scientific world view that we must now turn. The conception of an indefinite (and probably infinite) number of material phenomena existing and somehow connecting in an infinite space, one pervaded by penetrating 'spiritual' agencies, by 'imponderables'-as Newton's theory was uniformly mis-stated-hinged upon his famous formula of universal gravitation. It is a well-known fact that he did not believe in attraction as a real, physical force (but rather as a 'mathematical' law), i.e. that matter is virtually able

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to act at a distance or be animated by a spontaneous, quasi- hylozoistic, tendency. Nonetheless, Newton's ambiguity encouraged his readers to infer that the 'agent' which 'causes' gravity was not just simply operating according to strict mathematical laws but was immaterial-perhaps even God, or more plausibly, the 'spirit of nature', as posited by Cudworth, More and the Cambridge Platonists.

In the important Mathematical Principles of Natural Philo- sophy (translated into English in 1729), Newton distinguishes between the vis insita or inertiae, or that innate force of matter equivalent to a power of resisting by which every body endeavors or preserve itself in its present state, and the vis centripeta or centripetal force-exemplified by gravity, magnetism, electricity-by which all bodies tend to the center of the earth as iron 'tends to' the lodestone. Thus the virtue of gravity-and its related manifestations of attraction and repulsion-may be hypothesized to act throughout the universe; moreover, even 'hard' bodies could not exist without its agency since it prevents particles from flying apart and dispersing in space.

The famous Scholium following Book I addresses the question of the structure and system of that indivisible space. Newton declares that we cannot perceive-although it surely exists-absolute space, only those things in it and their motions in respect of each other, i.e. we can know only relative space, relative motion, and relative place. Importantly, then, for the concerns of this study, it is only motion's causes and effects, visible in the very thin, elastic substance or rarefied ether that fills the space of our 'world' or solar system, which are accessible to empirical knowledge.

Yet this attraction, operating throughout all extension, this 'great Spring by which all Nature is mov'd,' as Voltaire put it, was almost immediately upon publication removed from the 'Laws of Mechanics' where Newton had endeavored to situate it, and ranged among the dynamic energies of an unknown pneumatological principle supposedly operating in nature and at a distance.

What the Mathematical Principles and the Opticks confirmed, the New Theory about Light and Colours (1672) adumbrated. According to Voltaire, one of Newton's most celebrated popularizers, and, quoting from the Letters Con- cerning the English Nation (1733): the reason that colors arise in nature is nothing but a 'secret disposition' of bodies to reflect rays of a certain order and to absorb the rest. Analogously, light reflects on our eyes from the very 'bosom' of the 'pores' of opaque bodies such that Newton demonstrates 'we are not certain that there is a cubic Inch of solid Matter in the Universe, so far are we from conceiving of what Matter is.' As we have seen and shall see, the 'Vibrations or Fits of Light, which come and go incessantly', are only one of many such effects hovering on the verge of the immaterial and the invisible made compre- hensible by Newton. Indeed, he even claimed bodies could change into light and that light could be transformed into bodies.

In short, these speculations are based on the hidden premise of the metamorphic nature of matter or the capacity of a single substance to exist in different states. It was the 'immortal' Lavoisier who gave credence to this discovery in France, stating that almost all substances can exist in three guises: as solids, fluids and gases [14].

It is in this highly significant finding that we must discern the scientific source for Girodet's embodiment of Diana as a moonbeam, a representation at once both accurate and novel. The goddess simply manifests herself in an inorganic not an organic form, i.e. in another state, a form consistent with the scientific metaphors with which this painting abounds.

In sum, if electricity accounts for Endymion's 'charged' body, and if phosphorescence is evident in the manner by which moonlight is reflected from his warmed limbs, then only the presence of 'caloric' that penetrates all known substances can

explain the erotic heat literally generated by the rosy-colored torso of the sleeper.

More so even the 'romantic' idiom used to describe the phenomena of electricity and phosphorescence, the discussions of the universal caloric elicited a language of passion. Since it is a highly subtle fluid, not only are all bodies bombarded by these delicate particles transmitted through the atmosphere, but vaporous 'tendrils' of heat are, in turn, slowly and perpetually emitted from their surface into the surrounding space. This radiant internal energy is replaced by the ardor of ever-renewed warmth stemming from the outside [15]. The image of an animate nature, composed of bodies that readily emit and receive, is a potent metaphor for the give and take of love so powerfully evoked in the figure of the moonbathing Endymion.

The caloric was variously defined; all these hypotheses, however, held in common the attempt to grasp the cause of heat which produces dilation in a body and, of necessity, freely radiates beyond its confines.

Electricity, phosphorescence and caloric share the property of being predicated on an identical conception of light: it is a fluid emanation from luminous bodies that possess the capacity for launching for great distances a portion of their innermost substance. According to this influential theory, light is weightless, compressible, yet penetrates and diffuses. Hence light rays, despite their tremendous energy, never pierce or crush that which they strike. Instead, these beams return image-laden to their source bearing a 'transubstantiated' icon of the object struck [16]. Thus the electric, phosphorescent and caloric lustre of Girodet's Endymion does not remain narcissistically self- absorbed but is reciprocally restored to the shining moon.

According to mythology, Lucina (and her kin: Diana, Selene, Cynthia) derives her name from lucus, sacred grave, or, rather, lux, light or that which gives light. Macrobius claims that next to the sun the moon is the greatest divinity of antiquity. Pindar calls her the 'eye' of night-a point I shall return to since, in Girodet's painting, she clearly 'gazes' upon her beloved. Horace designates her Queen of Silence, and Propertius declaims passionately that 'one night (with Cynthia) will make a god of anybody outright'. But there is nothing novel or unique about any of these interpretations: each of which is based on the description of an anthropomorphic goddess who descends to earth. The inventiveness of Girodet's composition, by com- parison, consists in its having been conceived as a scene existing for the sole benefit of a being invisible to the spectator and who inhabits the sky above-an idea rendered fashionable by contemporary scientific treatises.

According to these, as the moon by reflected light from the sun illuminates the earth so the earth (the bright, disk-like part of Endymion's body emerging from the surrounding shadow) enlightens the surface of the moon. In fact, the earth diffuses the sun's reflex light more abundantly on the moon than does the moon upon the earth. This is owing to the fact that, if both bodies reflect light in proportion to their size, the earth will expend much more energy upon the lunar terrain than it itself receives [17]. On the occasion of a new moon, the illuminated side of our globe is fully turned towards its satellite and Diana witnesses a full earth, just as Endymion, in a similar position, perceives a full moon.

The genius of Girodet's painting lies in an inversion; he displays not the moon but that which she sees: Endymion's pale, phosphorescent body whose reflection of a reflection-now image-laden, according to contemporary theories of light- takes on a crescent form.

In this constant draining away of self through the metaphor of phosphorescent and lunar light, Girodet evokes the languor of a state well-known to mystics, in which the entirety of one's being is drawn away and transferred to the distant loved object [18].

These ideas belong to a new mysticism that focuses attention on light as a delicate, quasi-spiritual emanation, not as a 'brutal'

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Endymion's Moonbath

corpuscle. In fact, because of its extreme tenuousness-even while drenching bodies with all its 'torrential' power-light seems not to exist [16, p. 88].

To continue: the moon, while making its revolutions, undergoes great changes in appearance. When it exhibits itself on the meridian at midnight, occupying that part of the firmament which is opposite the sun, it presents itself as a disk. As it continues its revolutions eastward it becomes deficient, waning on the west side until it vanishes. About four days after its 'disappearance' (because of the sun's intensity) a delicate crescent waxes slightly to the east of the sun. When the moon returns to the meridian in twenty-nine and a half days, it is again in opposition to the sun and seems full [17, pp. 45-46].

We will remember how Girodet stated that the reflection of the moon and the tint of the surrounding objects and even of Endymion's body left no doubt as to the hour of the night when the action took place and to the presence of the goddess. Although the lunar orb is not visible in the turbulent sky of the painting, it seems to me that the deep penumbra represents midnight and the burst of light sitting low on the horizon and spilling through the momentarily parted clouds could be produced only by a vigorous full moon. It is in this phase that Diana is most resplendent, that her beams are most potent, that her effects-both psychological and meteorological-are most disturbing [19]. It is at this time, too, that the electric aerial ocean becomes visibly agitated, that undulating mists and vapors produce turbulent winds and cause the weather to change. Nonetheless, the sultry oppressiveness does not burden the beautiful sleeper who remains unscathed by the weightless beam of light that ascends immediately upon touching him.

The new and attractive scientific language of the late eighteenth century was filled with concepts peculiarly suited to artists and writers. One of the most appealing was the doctrine of chemical or elective affinities. Experimentation apparently demonstrated that all substances when left to themselves, and at a proper distance, enjoyed a mutual tendency to come into contact. This drive towards union could be observed not only in all contiguous bodies on the earth's surface but also in those great bodies of the universe [20]. This marriage of opposites is exactly what occurs in the single ray that 'weds' the distant moon to the earth-bound Endymion.

Such novel vocabulary also accounts for the polarity of hardness and softness so visible in the painting. The fluid atmosphere contrasts with, while simultaneously dissolving, the flanks of the marmoreal sleeper. The erosion of Endymion's resistance is thus achieved by a chemical metaphor: the phosphorescing of white light on white marble. It is by no means an unusual device. The literature of the pre-romantic and romantic era abounds with similes of dissolving and becoming [21]. (We should recall that as Endymion is grazed by light his corporeal reality dissolves, he becomes transmuted into matter in another form, into the luminous image seen only by Diana.)

Certainly, the melting and veiled darkness adds to the mystery of a scene that deliberately avoids crystalline clarity. Even Diana's ardor is metamorphosed into a 'cool' lunar ray, and erotic fervor is merely suggested through the presence of the universal caloric, a mechanical explanation for Endymion's capacity to absorb and glowingly radiate light and heat. This calm image is far removed from the hot and fierce transports of enthusiasm that dazzle the mind with a false glare [22]. On the contrary, because of its profound stillness and the learnedness of its scientific 'effects', this picture is the embodiment of what Longinus called the heightened Sublime, ekstatis [23],

It is in this fruitful notion-tenaciously persisting into the eighteenth century and given a new impetus by experimentation-that we can locate the aesthetic root for Girodet's elimination or, rather, transformation of Diana [24]. She represents in an incorporeal medium, the moonbeam, the invisible but continuous presence of divinity in nature. Like

Echo, she is the daughter of air and, instead of speech, she manifests herself through light [25]. To capture her likeness Girodet, sustained by contemporary scientific studies, paints her penetrating effect, the ekstatis that is felt when spirit makes a connection with the sublunar world. The genius of Girodet's creation consists in his making the beholder picture things unseen, forcing the spectator to create in full in his imagination those significant parts of the action to which his art has only directed him.

In sum: in an empirical age the ancient anthropomorphic gods were neither to be taken seriously nor was their existence deemed verifiable. Always au courant, Girodet alter a false pagan deity into a physically 'true' suffused, silvery and watery haze. As in the growing romantic literature of the period, the artist fuses the fluid with the statuesque, a dissolving stony form with a welling spiritual content embodied in ascending mists, delicate breezes and wet lights [26].

But what of the sleeping Endymion (as the painting's title reminds us)? One of the most important aesthetic concepts of the eighteenth century, immortalized by Winckelmann in his image of the quiet depths of the ocean as an analogy of the becalmed soul, is that of stillness [27]. The wonder of the unio mystica is the descent of the divine into the receptive soul that has finally become still. Recalling the then current belief that it is at night and especially under the influence of a full moon that our bodies are particularly susceptible to astral emanations, Girodet painted the human soul 'open' to the 'influence' of a god. Serenity, passivity, absence of all sense of self-an inert state very reminiscent of sleep-are the external indications for this moment of greatest receptivity (20, II, 530-546). Translated into visual terms, Girodet renders the absorbing and reflecting of light, the dissolving of the ego in slumber; in short, he creates a state favorable for the influx of the divine, now scientifically shown to be immanent in the physical energies of nature.

REFERENCES AND NOTES

1. The classic study remains that of G. Levitine, Girodet-Trioson, an Iconographical Study (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation: Harvard, 1952). The thesis developed in this article, namely, that Girodet's art is 'grounded' in Enlightenment science, should be read with two broader cultural studies of the period in mind. See Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968) pp. 3-45; and Robert E. Schofield, Mechanism and Materialism. British Natural Philosophy in an Age of Reason (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970) pp. 157-169.

2. P. A. Coupin, Oeuvres posthumes de Girodet-Trioson (Paris: J. Renouard, 1829) II, Letter XL.

3. Ibid., Letter III. 4. F. J. M. Noel, Dictionnaire de la fable (3d rev. ed., Paris: Le

Normant, 1810 I, 516. This edition, the only one available to me, contains the preface for the first (1801) edition.

6. J. H. Rubin, Endymion's Dream as a Myth of Romantic Inspiration, Art Quarterly I, 47-48, (1978). Rubin makes the interesting observation that the upturned head in a sleeping position is commonly used to indicate psychically active sleep. He also contrasts the downward hanging heads of the antique prototypes (originally established by Levitine) with Endymion's alertness.

6. J. Lalande, Abrege d'astronomie (Paris: Chez la Veuve Desaint, 1774) p. xxii. Also see: J. F. Daniell, Meteorological Essays and Observations (London: T. & G. Underwood, 1823) p. 264.

7. G. Adams, Lectures on Natural and Experimental Philosophy, Considered in Its Present State of Improvement (London: J. Dillon, 1794) II, 8. Also see: J. Capper, Meteorological andMiscellaneous Tracts Applicable to Navigation, Gardening, and Farming, with Calendars of Flora for Greece, France, England and Sweden (Cardiff: J. D. Bird, 1800) p. 40.

8. For a beautiful description of plant phosphorescence, see: Oeuvres Completes de Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (Harmonies de la nature), L.

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Aime-Martin, ed. (Paris: Chez Mequignon-Marvis, Libraire, 1818) VII-VIII, 9-10: 54.

9. P. Bertholon, De '1electricite des m&etores; ouvrage dans lequel on traite de l'electricite naturelle en general, & des m&etores en particulier, contenant l'exposition & l'explication des principaux phenomenes qui ont rapport a la m&etorologie electrique, Journal encyclopedique p. 227 (1787). For modern discussions of the complex late eighteenth-century interpretations of electricity, see: Arnold Thackray, Atoms and Powers. An Essay on Newtonian Matter-Theory and the Development of Chemistry, Harvard Monograph in the History of Science, 14 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970) pp. 134-147; and J. L. Heilbron, Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries. A Study of Early Modern Physics (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1979) pp. 436-448.

10. J. B. Pujoulx, Paris lafin duXVIII siecle, ouesquissehistorique et morale des monuments et des ruines de cette capitale; de I'etat des sciences, des arts et de l'industrie a cette epoque, ainsi que des moeurs et des ridicules de ses habitans (Paris: Chez Brigite Math&, Libraire, 1801) pp. 227-231. Also see: J. Lalande, Histoire naturelle de l'air et des meteores (Paris: Chez l'auteur, 1771) IX, 189.

11. B. Nicolson, Joseph Wright of Derby, Painter of Light (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968) I, 112; 119. Further, on the enormous popularity of the sciences in Europe, see: F. W. Shurlock. The Scientific Pictures of Joseph Wright, Science Progress XVII, 432 (1923); and R. E. Schofield, The Lunar Society of Birmingham. A Social History of Provincial Science and Industry in Eighteenth Century England(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963) pp. 180-182. For the growth of interest in science in France, see: Roger Hahn, The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666-1803 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: Uni- versity of California Press, 1971) p. 84ff.

12. P. Heinrich, Die Phosphorescenz der Korper oder die im Dunkeln bemerkbaren Lichtphanomene der anorganischer Natur (Nuremberg: Johann Leonhard Schragschen Buchhandlung, 1811) pp. 7-8.

13. Ibid., p. 110. 14. A. L. Lavoisier, Traite elementaire de la chimie (Paris: Cuchet,

1789) 1, 7. For exhaustive discussion of the nature and influence of Newtonian 'occult qualities' and Lockean 'powers', see the seminal studies by Alexandre Koyre, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1957); and Newtonian Studies (Chicago: Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 1965). By the late eighteenth-century, imponderables such as attraction or repulsion were not what was

imparted to matter 'but what really makes it to be what it is, in so much that without it, it would be nothing at all...' See the important work by the chemist Joseph Priestley, A Free Discussion of the Doctrines of Materialism, and Philosophical Necessity, In a Correspondence between Dr. Price, and Dr. Priestley (London: printed for J. Johnson and T. Cadell, 1778) p. 244. Contrast this to Isaac Newton, Opticks, or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections & Colours of Light (4th, 1731 ed.) (New York: Dover, 1952), Queries 30, 31, pp. 374; 375-376, 401-402.

15. P. Prevost, Du calorique rayonnant (Paris, Geneva: J. J. Paschoud, 1809) pp. 23; 27.

16. J. C. De La Metherie, Analyse des travaux sur les sciences naturelles pendant les annees 1795, 1796 & 1797 (Paris: A. J. Dugour, 1798) p. 10. Also see: S. N. H. Linguet, Reflexions sur la lumiere, ou conjectures sur la part qu'elle a dans le mouvement des corps celestes (Paris, Brussels: Chez Royez, 1787) pp. 54-55; 61-62.

17. G. Adams, Astronomical and Geographical Essays, 3rd ed. (London: R. Hindmarsh, 1795) p. 139.

18. Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse, Fragments, trans. by Richard Howard (New York: Hill & Wang, 1978) p. 156.

19. G. Toaldo, Della vera influenza degliastrisullestagionee mutazioni di tempo. Saggio meteorologico (3rd rev. ed., Padua: Typis Seminarii, 1797) pp. 48; 63.

20. T. Bergmann, A Dissertation on Elective Attractions, trans. from the Latin (London: J. Murray, 1789) p. 2. Also see: P. J. G. Cabanis, Rapports du physique et du moral de 'homme (Paris: Crapart, Caille et Ravier, 1802) II, 388.

21. G. Bachelard, L'eau et les reves. Essai sur l'imagination de la matiere (Paris: J. Corti, 1942) p. 212.

22. S. I. Tucker, Enthusiasm, A Study in Semantic Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972) p. 152.

23. Longinus on the Sublime andSir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses en Art, E. Olsen, ed. (Chicago Press, 1945) pp. xi-xiii.

24. For the importance of the theme of transformation, see: J. L. Carr, Pygmalion and the philosophes, the Animated Statue in Eighteenth Century France, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes XIII, 239-2555 (1960)

25. L. Vinge, The Narcissus Theme in Western European Literature up to the Early Nineteenth Century (Lund: Gleerups, 1967) p. 27.

26. G. W. Knight, The Starlit Dome. Studies in the Poetry of Vision (New York: Oxford University Press, 1941) p. 132.

27. B. M. Stafford, Beauty of the Invisible: Winckelmann and the Aesthetic of Imperceptibility, Zeitschrift fiir Kunstgeschichte XLII, 65 (1980).

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endymion's moonbath: art and science in girodet's early masterpiece

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