Pygmalion1.0157e_GérômeMarble

Jean-Léon Gérôme, "Tanagra," ca. 1890, marble and polychrome sculpture, Musée d'Orsay, RF 2514, LUX 52

Click for a vimeo moving image of the Tanagra.

In the 1873 excavation of Tanagra in Boeotia a terracotta figure of a girl retaining still paint from antiquity came to light. Gérôme and others seized this opportunity to treat the scholastic debate about ancient polychromy in statuary. Gérôme's Pygmalion paintings (note painting on back wall) and painted sculpture, as well as this painting and its attendant sculpture are part of the artist's treatment of this matter. The "Tanagra" is a personification of the archaeological site, as the pick-axe near the sculpture's left leg suggests. The nude female here, a representation of the city of Tanagra, offers in her left hand a painted statuette.

Consider a) that Gérôme celebrated this sculpture's completion in a contemporary painting (1890-1893) taking on the paragone debate between sculpture's vs. painting's superiority, and b) that Gérôme's treatment of the Pygmalion theme worked these same themes in this same phase of his life.

See V. Stoichita, The Pygmalion Effect (Chicago, 2010), figure 17

John Miller, "Some Versions of Pygmalion" in C. Martindale, ed. Ovid Renewed (1988).

M. Reinhold, CJ66 (1971) 316-19

Order Gerald M. Ackerman, The Life and Works of Jean-Léon Gérôme, with a catalogue raisonné (London and New York, 1986).