COROT, Jean-Baptiste Camille
(b. 1796, Paris, d. 1875, Paris)

Valléda

1868-70
Oil on wood, 83 x 55 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris

In his last years, Corot painted several figures. In these paintings the sitter, occasionally a friend posing in the studio, is relocated in a sweet poetic world that reflects the personality of the person portrayed. In such cases the subject becomes an archetype or an allegory, and often appears immersed in a deep reverie. Corot sometimes completes the metamorphoses of his model by subsequently giving the picture a title borrowed from literature, as is the case in Valléda, the heroine of Chateaubriand's Les Martyrs.