Apollo by Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson

Anne-Louis Girodet (1767–1824) was a painter whose works exemplify the first phase of Romanticism in French art. Girodet began to study drawing in 1773. He later became a student of the Neoclassical architect Étienne-Louis Boullée, with whose encouragement he joined the studio of Jacques-Louis David in late 1783 or early 1784. Girodet won the Prix de Rome (1789) for his Joseph Recognized by His Brothers, which shows the influence of David’s Neoclassicism. In The Sleep of Endymion (1792) Girodet displays a new emotional element akin to the troubled Romanticism of the novelist Chateaubriand.