ABSTRACT
The subject of Salomé represents another dimension of the evolution of the paragone into the latter half of the nineteenth century. Moreau’s interest in Salomé has frequently been characterised as an obsessive fascination with the evil woman, an expression of personal or social misogynistic beliefs, or as evidence of his espousal of decadence. It might be said that Moreau nearly single-handedly revised and regenerated the Salomé narrative for the nineteenth-century art world. Like so many of his subjects, Moreau repeated the motif in many paintings under diverse titles. Gustave was the son of Louis Moreau, who had been a scholar of the arts and had amassed an impressive library that he eventually bequeathed to his son. Orphic subjects were popular in the paragone debate because of Orpheus’s role in the birth of the arts. The unusual painting illustrates the story of the god of the arts, Orpheus.
