France's rebellious romantic.

• Position: Museums Today - Girodet's art showcased in new exhibition

A first-hand witness of the disruptions caused by the French Revolution and Napoleon's rise to power, Anne-Louis Girodet (1767-1824), an important painter of the French School, is considered one of the pillars of Romanticism's early period, using historical painting to reflect emotions. He also painted many portraits and, in them, made clear his stance on the issues of the day--he spoke out against slavery by painting a portrait a Jean-Baptiste Belley, the black deputy from Santo Domingo; committed himself politically to Napoleon Bonaparte as Emperor; and argued for the Romantic aesthetic in support of his contemporary, the writer Francois-Rene Chateaubriand.

Born into a bourgeois family in Montargis, Girodet became a painter despite his parents' objections. After the death of his father in 1784, he became a student of Jacques-Louis David who, before the Revolution, reinvigorated French painting and established the rules of Neoclassicism. Along with Antoine-Jean Gros and Francois Gerard, Girodet was among David's most celebrated students. He demonstrated an extraordinary talent and was an exceptional draftsman. He quickly grasped the aesthetic and intellectual rules of Neoclassicism, rules he would set out to contravene in his artistic endeavors after the French Revolution.

In 1789, Girodet won the Prix de Rome with his painting, "Joseph Recognized by His Brothers," and thereafter continued to paint in his own way. He set off for Italy to study the great masters of the Renaissance. In 1793, his "Sleep of Endymion," which he sent to the Paris Salon, attracted attention, but his more fluid style and his incorporation of mystery, sensuality, and the irrational marked a divergence from David's Neoclassicism and created a volatile relationship between teacher and pupil.

Girodet also was known for his explosive personality. His portrait of "Mademoiselle Lange as Danae" (1799), a revenge on a courtesan-actress, scandalized the Salon with its satirical sexual references. His lively...