Portret van Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson c. 1826 - 1852

Nicolas Maurin produced this lithograph portrait of Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson sometime in the first half of the 19th century. It is a study in the construction of artistic identity through the institutional structures of art. Girodet, shown here in a characteristic pose of Romantic intensity, was one of the foremost painters of post-revolutionary France. In its self-conscious classicism, his art helped to consolidate the new visual order in the years after 1789. Having come through the studio of Jacques-Louis David, Girodet embraced the aesthetic of the Academy and helped to further its prominence in French cultural life. Lithography itself was a relatively new medium at this time, and its adoption for portraiture reflects the changing relationship between artistic production, social class, and the market for images. To understand this fully, one might research the archives of the French Academy, as well as the history of printmaking and the rise of the individual artist as a cultural figure.