L’heureux Ménage 

Jean-Honoré Fragonard painted ‘L’heureux Ménage’ depicting a domestic scene with a father, mother, and child. Here, we witness the father playfully besieged by his child, a motif brimming with symbolism. The child's innocent yet forceful embrace around the father's neck recalls the iconography of Cupid, often depicted playfully attacking or clinging to figures, symbolizing love’s binding power. Yet, in a darker vein, this embrace echoes images of martyrdom, where the figure's neck becomes a site of vulnerability and surrender. Consider the Laocoön, an ancient sculpture depicting a Trojan priest strangled by serpents, a primal scene of struggle and submission. The child’s embrace, while lighthearted, carries an echo of this ancient drama, a reminder of the complex, sometimes suffocating nature of familial bonds, revealing how archetypal gestures persist, transformed, across time.