Entry
The Pilgrimage to Cythera — Watteau’s reception piece for the Académie royale, 1717, in the Louvre
Approved in 1712 and summoned to deliver his reception piece at last, Watteau painted it in eight months and presented it to the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. The minutes entered it as « representing the pilgrimage to the isle of Cythera », then struck those words out for « une feste galante » — the term’s first appearance. The painting stayed with the Académie, then the Louvre, its only Watteau until the La Caze bequest of 1869. (Editorial synthesis)
Recorded author of The Pilgrimage to Cythera: Watteau.
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