part two
"She was one of the neo-Greeks who
rose, half naked indeed, but fully clad in their own modesty..."
(Arsène Houssaye, Notre-Dame de TJiermidor, 1866).
.
The nymph-bride stands under a laurel tree, timeless grace and chastity personified,
not disguising her expression of mischievous amusement: detail of the oval
portrait in oils of Madame Récamier, in her early twenties, c.1799, by
Eulalie Morin (1765 - 1837).
Musée National des Châteaux de
Versailles et du Trianon
As much as politicians, generals and philosophers, she was trying in her own way to make order out of chaos, contributing her own sensibility of what was best in old and new, while maintaining an unusual degree of independence in her private life. Outwardly avoiding the thunderbolts and lightning of her Romantic contemporaries, an arouser of unrequited passions in other people apparently unmoved by sexual desires herself, a good...
