The Deliverance of Cybele, an Allegory of the Seasons

The Deliverance of Cybele, an Allegory of the Seasons

Gabriel François Doyen

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Doyen was one of the most promising young artists of the generation that came of age in the last decades before the French Revolution, a period when a vigorous neo-baroque style was gaining ground against the waning popularity of the rococo. His submissions to the biennial Salons held at the Louvre tended to be few in number but ambitious in format and intent, typically accompanied by lengthy textual explanations. This large, painterly Allegory of the Seasons was the first drawing he chose to exhibit. The goddess Cybele, identified by her turreted crown and lion-drawn chariot, represents Earth, but also fertility and vegetation. In Doyen’s image, she is rendered powerless, beset by the ice and frost of winter. The arrival of Jupiter Pluvius, the god of the rains, with his outstretched arms and flowing hair, signals the return of spring, or "Cybele’s deliverance." The drawing was commissioned by the duchesse de Choiseul whose husband had been exiled to Chanteloup following the death of his supporter, Madame de Pompadour. It has been suggested that Cybele’s predicament was intended as an allegory for the banishment of the duc de Choiseul, whose wife hoped that his return, like Cybele’s, would be imminent. In fact, Choiseul remained a popular figure in the capital during his exile and did return following Louis XV’s death in 1774. Perrin Stein, May 2014

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Deliverance of Cybele, an Allegory of the SeasonsThe Deliverance of Cybele, an Allegory of the SeasonsThe Deliverance of Cybele, an Allegory of the SeasonsThe Deliverance of Cybele, an Allegory of the SeasonsThe Deliverance of Cybele, an Allegory of the Seasons

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.