‘The Embarkation for Cythera’— Antoine Watteau
One of the great examples of the French painter’s style, a combination of nature, nihilism and high society.
Watteau was a painter whose work could be recognized today at a glance.
His style, unmistakable, was the result of a personal exploration of nature in the service of a kind of nihilism of high society and of the inheritance of earlier artists such as the late Rubens, of whom the French painter was a great admirer.
In The Embarkation for Cythera, one can perfectly perceive this almost fairy-tale-like aura. The subject of the painting is a landscape representation of the island of Cythera, known as the island of love, which at that time (early 18th century) was widely represented in several plays, ballets, and operas.
Another of Watteau’s sources of inspiration was the so-called Commedia dell’Arte, a trendy genre in France and Italy, whose interpretation of national spirits and character galleries greatly influenced the painter, as well as others such as Gillot (his master) or Lancret.
Although undoubted, those influences were assimilated by Watteau and applied to a pictorial style that he had already cultivated in a personal way, which consisted of a universe somewhat distanced from…
