Watteau's Pilgrimage to Cythera and the Subversive Utopia of the Opera-Ballet

• Autores: Georgia Cowart
• Localización: Art bulletin, ISSN 0004-3079, Vol. 83, Nº 3, 2001, págs. 461-478
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This essay traces the ideology and imagery of Watteau’s Pilgrimage to Cythera to sources in the contemporary opera-ballet. Focusing on two ballets (Le triomphe des arts and Les amours déguisez) and related works produced at the Paris Opéra between 1696 and 1713, it examines their protest of Louis XIV’s absolutism through the satiric reversals of eponymous court ballets of his early reign. Relating these works to Watteau’s Pilgrimage, it explores the locus amoenus of Cythera as the site of political subversion and traces the ways in which Cytherean imagery is used to undermine the iconology of royal propaganda.