Flaming Shadows: Girodet and the Incarnate Spectator

Abstract: This essay argues that Anne-Louis Girodet's mythological paintings, specifically his Endymion and Pygmalion and Galatea , do not position the spectator as the subject of rational vision. With light and shadow transforming the paintings into more troubling scenes with blurry objects, illegible backgrounds, and corporeal confusion, the spectator cannot be understood as the subject of rational vision. Formal scrutiny informed by Condillacian sensationalism enables us to consider Girodet's mythological paintings as agentive objects that ignited disorienting spectatorial encounters for Girodet himself, his contemporaneous audiences, and even us. Ultimately, this essay considers how Girodet's mythological paintings failed to bind the spectator to the eye of discarnate reason when they were made and pass this failure to present day viewers.