Picture on Los Cuadernos de Don Rigoberto (Henry Gervex, Rolla)

I noted that someone was looking for "picture on The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto
". There are various editions of the book, so the covers differ accordingly. The novel itself is woven around the work of Egon Schiele, the Austrian painter, and some of his works are used to illustrate the 1999 Faber&Faber edition.

The cover of this edition, however, features a different work: it is Rolla (1878), by the French painter Henri Gervex (left). It is an illustration of a scene from the long poem under the same name by the enfant terrible of the French literature, Alfred de Musset (1810-1857). Rolla is the story of a bourgeois, Jacques Rolla, whose self-ruin and bankruptcy come as the consequence of his ennui with his social status. Unlike what may be deduced from Gervex's painting, de Musset's Rolla ended his life in a romantic but noble way: he came to visit Marion to tell her of his state of affairs, drank poison, and died in her arms.

The painting went public 20 years after de Musset's death and 45 years after Rolla was composed. It was rejected by the Salon, and Gervex went on to display the painting in the shop window, attracting the crowds of onlookers and producing the furore. The public was not altogether unfamiliar with the portraits of courtesans or the depiction of the "gallant scenes"; the latter were particularly popular throughout the 18th c. On the left is Venus and Mars by Botticelli that dates back to 1483; and on the right is Manet's Olympia (1863), a hommage to Giorgione (Sleeping Venus) and Titian (Venus of Urbino), as far as the pose of the model is concerned. All those paintings, Manet's included, preceded the work of Gervex. His other contemporaries, including Ingres and Degas, were producing numerous studies of the nude, so the naked form, however 'indecent', wasn't necessarily the reason for a public outcry.

The entire "problem" the public would have with Gervex's painting is literally dumped in the bottom right corner of the canvas. The protruding walking stick is, of course, a phallic symbol, but it is buried almost entirely under female clothes. The top hat rests on this heap of fabric, overturned. The walking stick and the top hat were both the symbols of a bourgeois. Rolla the painting was scandalous not because of nudity, the relaxed pose of the sleeping courtesan, or as the illustration to the work of a no less scandalous author. The outrage was provoked by the depiction of the corrupt state of the gentilshommes who in the heat of passion were bringing the entire social class into submission to a prostitute. Compared to Gervex's work, the engraving from the edition of de Musset's collected work looks almost impossibly demure, giving us a Shakespearean-style scene (right).



As to why this painting was chosen for Los Cuadernos de Don Rigoberto's cover, my guess is that Gervex's Rolla would bode well for the novel's focus on sexual fantasy and desire, often forbidden.