Allegory of Lyric Poetry

Allegory of Lyric Poetry at the Metropolitan Museum (1753) personifies the art of lyric verse — the mode of poetry most associated with love, music, and personal feeling — in a composition designed for decorative architectural contexts. Boucher's allegories of the arts were standard components of the programs that decorated the grandest rooms of French aristocratic residences, each personification combining classical female beauty with carefully selected attributes. In 1753 Boucher was at the height of his career and influence, director of the Gobelins and Madame de Pompadour's favorite painter, producing works that defined French visual culture for the reign of Louis XV. The series to which this painting belonged would have celebrated the patron's cultural refinement through the personification of arts and sciences, a humanist program with roots in Renaissance studiolo decoration. The Metropolitan's French eighteenth-century collection is exceptional in its depth, and this Allegory provides a major example of Boucher's decorative mythology at its most ambitious scale.

The allegorical figure is rendered with Boucher's characteristic smooth, luminous flesh painting and elegant pose. The decorative setting incorporates musical attributes and cloud-borne draperies typical of Rococo ceiling and overdoor compositions.