Existing comment:
Death and Decapitation
Death is a prevalent and persistent theme for Guérard, anticipating the late nineteenthcentury Symbolist movement and its artists' engagement with the subject. Particularly gruesome are his portrayals of beheaded humans and animals. Guérard's fascination with the subject was a response in part to his penchant for François Rabelais (1494–1553), whose writings were associated with the grotesque and who explored the theme of decapitation in his celebrated pentalogy La Vie de Gargantua et Pantagruel. The century-old memory of the French Revolution must also have been an influence, having condemned countless aristocrats to the guillotine for their crimes against the people, though other fin-de-siècle anxieties are doubtless at stake, too. |