Le Verrou

c. 1777–78

Oil on canvas, 29 1/8 × 37 in. Musée du Louvre, Paris

The garden is gone: one shaft of light, a red curtain and a bolt being shot. The painter of the swing turns toward drama.

Look at

Light rakes in from the left to the far wall at upper right, picking out shirt, bolt and yellow dress; the far left corner falls to near-black.
A diagonal runs from the bed's lower left corner up to the bolt, with the couple at its upper end.
Deep red, golden yellow and white against brown shadow, not the pastels of the earlier pictures.

Painted for the marquis de Véri as pendant to an Adoration of the Shepherds, sacred love set against profane.
Probably offered to the Louvre in 1817 and certainly in 1922; finally bought from the Galerie Heim in 1974.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain