Stripped of Pretense: Gérôme’s Phryne Before the Areopagus
It was a scandalous image in 1861—and still whispers controversy today. Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Phryne Before the Areopagus freezes the moment a famed courtesan, accused of impiety in ancient Athens, is stripped nude before a tribunal of somber, robed elders.
Painted with Gérôme’s hallmark academic precision, the scene electrifies with tension, sensuality, and satire. The painting dramatizes the legend of Phryne, a 4th-century BCE hetaera known as much for her beauty as her defiance.
Charged with blasphemy, she stood trial before the Areopagus, the high court of Athens. According to ancient sources—particularly Athenaeus—her defender, the orator Hypereides, tore away her robe mid-trial to expose her divine form, arguing that such beauty could only be a gift from the gods and could not be guilty of impiety.
The judges, stunned, acquitted her. Gérôme’s Obsession with the Past Jean-Léon Gérôme, a product of the French academic tradition, was no stranger to painting theatrical recreations of antiquity. He gravitated toward classical themes that merged sensuality with moral drama, often giving viewers both a history lesson and a voyeuristic thrill.
Painted during Napoleon III’s Second Empire, when eroticism cloaked in classicism was fashionable among the elite, Phryne Before the Areopagus served as both a historical tableau and a commentary on hypocrisy, male power, and judicial spectacle.
Gérôme painted this during a period of peak influence, when his technique—hyper-realistic, coldly meticulous, and archaeological in detail—earned both awe and derision. He was fascinated by moments of sudden exposure: gladiators awaiting judgment, Pygmalion’s statue springing to life, or Phryne being unveiled.
Each painted a world that seemed deeply researched, yet theatrical in its emotional manipulation.
Who Was the Model?
Gérôme never publicly named the model for Phryne, but speculation abounds. Given the frequency with which models posed anonymously for academic nudes in 19th-century Paris, it’s likely she was a professional artist’s model, possibly one used by Gérôme in other works.
Some scholars have suggested a connection to Marie-Henriette Poussot, who modeled for Gérôme around that time, though this remains unconfirmed. What is certain is that the figure of Phryne conforms to Gérôme’s idealized anatomy—smooth, statuesque, untouchable. She is less a specific woman than a vessel of allegory: divine, sexual, condemned.
Gérôme’s Own Reflections
Gérôme was not a public diarist and left few personal commentaries on individual paintings. However, in letters and interviews he defended his interest in “truthful” representations of history, and he considered Phryne one of his most significant works. He viewed the painting as an exploration of injustice cloaked in spectacle—and the fickleness of public morality.
He was also highly aware of its impact. Phryne debuted at the 1861 Salon in Paris and instantly drew massive attention. Crowds gathered, drawn as much by the execution as by the nudity.
Gérôme anticipated and exploited this tension—he knew it would provoke. Loved and Loathed Among the bourgeoisie and collectors of the Second Empire, Phryne was adored.
It was purchased by the Belgian banker Paul van der Linden and exhibited widely before making its way to the Kunsthalle Hamburg, where it remains today.
Critics, however, were split.
The influential critic Théophile Gautier praised Gérôme's technique but felt the painting was too theatrical.
Others condemned the work as academic pornography in disguise.
Feminist commentators, then and now, have seen it as a distillation of the male gaze: a woman’s body weaponized in court, her fate determined by the impact of nudity on men.
A Painting That Still Speaks
More than 160 years later, Phryne Before the Areopagus continues to seduce, disturb, and fascinate. In a world where beauty, justice, and spectacle still collide in courtrooms and media alike, Gérôme’s canvas reads like a prelude to the modern trial-by-image—where the truth matters less than the performance. Gérôme knew exactly what he was doing.
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