The Garter by Jean Francois DeTroy in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2020

The Garter
1724


Object Details

Artist: Jean François de Troy (French, Paris 1679–1752 Rome)

Date: 1724

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 25 1/2 × 21 1/8 in. (64.8 × 53.7 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Bequest of Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 2019

Accession Number: 2019.141.22


A man offers to help a woman reattach her garter, a common conceit in erotic painting and literature in eighteenth-century France. Her hand firmly rejects his advance, but the indecorous decision to reveal her leg in his presence suggests a ruse—perhaps inspired by the contents of the book she has discarded next to an already disrobed bronze statuette. The clock resembles the latest models by the famed furniture maker André Charles Boulle and includes a figure of Saturn, or Father Time, whose scythe has been stolen by Cupid.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/438126