The Progress of Love – At Full Attention
Workshop of Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806)
Oil on canvas, circa 1771
Private collection
From The Rendezvous to At Full Attention
(The English title At Full Attention plays on the transformation from Fragonard’s original Le Rendez-vous to Le Garde-à-vous — a change that shifts from the language of polite encounter to that of erotic readiness, referring wittily to the triumphant erection of one of the scene’s protagonists.)
What if we were to conduct a true connoisseur’s investigation into this enigmatic work? A painting, apparently from the hand of an assistant to the French master Fragonard, which seems to be a direct variation on one of the painter’s late Rococo creations. Comparing this contemporary adaptation—produced for an unknown patron—with the original version of The Progress of Love – The Rendezvous reveals the hidden intentions behind this reinterpretation. Through the change of figures, the altered attributes, and the different narrative tone, this exploration shows how a single libertine composition can be reimagined without losing the spirit of its original model.
Sensuality at the Tip of the Brush
What if we were to conduct a true connoisseur’s investigation into this enigmatic work? A painting, apparently from the hand of an assistant to the French master Fragonard, which seems to be a direct variation on one of the painter’s late Rococo creations. Comparing this contemporary adaptation—produced for an unknown patron—with the original version of The Progress of Love – The Rendezvous reveals the hidden intentions behind this reinterpretation. Through the change of figures, the altered attributes, and the different narrative tone, this exploration shows how a single libertine composition can be reimagined without losing the spirit of its original model.
A Scene of Galant “Crime”
The scene seems familiar, yet several elements quickly halt the viewer’s gaze. The composition mirrors Fragonard’s: a lush grove framed by a stone balustrade, a statue on its pedestal at center, a flowered urn to the left, and a diagonal that unites the two protagonists. And yet, four major transformations—instantly visible—disrupt the meaning of the scene, shifting it from refined gallantry to a vision charged with a wholly different intensity.
1. Transformation of the left-hand figure: when grace changes face
In the original, a young woman — all late-Rococo softness — is caught mid-gesture: seated, her torso still turned toward her suitor, arms open, though her head looks the other way. The pose combines grace with a hint of eager anticipation.
In the variation, she is replaced by a young man, nude and heroized yet retaining an evident grace. His posture almost exactly reprises the female figure’s open gesture, but his head turns differently: he casts a direct, confident look toward his counterpart. This change in the carriage of the head alters the dynamic: gentle abandon becomes composed availability, open to a scenario that could go further than in Fragonard’s work. The red drapery heightens the academic register without erasing the supple ease of the pose. A blue butterfly resting on his hand adds a vivid, disquieting note: in eighteenth-century pictorial language it signals the quickening of desire and the lightness of flesh, a reminder that metamorphosis happens through the body.
2. Transformation of the right-hand protagonist: from languishing suitor to bold gallant
In Fragonard’s painting, the young man is about to climb over the balustrade by way of a wooden ladder. He is still hesitating, watching, his left hand braced on the stile, his gaze turned toward his flame. It is a suspended instant, between daring and surprise, where the impulse seems checked by the discovery of the other.
In the variation, the male figure is replaced by a powerful nude man with a vigorous, mature body. Where the original shows an elegant seducer, we see here a massive physique whose musculature imposes a different tension. The movement is also further along: one leg is already across, the torso lunges forward, ready to enter the grove completely. The viewer cannot miss the erection of his enormous sex — the eponymous “at full attention” — leaving no doubt about his desire and intent. Beyond this conquering member no heroic attribute is added, yet the transformed body alone changes the register: the scene becomes a meeting of two contrasted masculinities, one graceful, the other imposing.
3. Transformation of the central statue: from Venus to Hercules
In the original, the female statue of Venus, flanked by Cupid, sets a code of galant pastorale. It invokes eighteenth-century conventions: idealized female nudity, softness, allusions to tender feeling.
In the variation, the statue is replaced by a monumental male figure, plausibly identifiable as Hercules. The switch marks a clear transition: from a world of feminine grace, as Rococo painting often codified it, to a paradigm of strength, muscle, and heroic verticality. Cupid, now equipped with a bow and with his arrowalready loosed, has visibly struck both protagonists’ hearts. This shift realigns the symbolic axis of the painting and situates the human dialogue within a more assertive masculine imaginary closer to carnal fulfillment.
4. Transformation of the left urn: the devil is in the details
The architectural setting remains, but the inscription KALOS appears on the urn’s pedestal. This Greek word— “beautiful” in both moral and bodily senses — invokes the visual culture of antiquity where masculine beauty signals value and accomplishment. This single addition subtly reinforces the homoerotic reading of the variation.
Revenge for a Rejection
The original panel belonged to the celebrated Progress of Love series, commissioned from Fragonard around 1771 to adorn the Pavilion of Louveciennes, the private retreat of Madame du Barry³. Built between 1770 and 1771 by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, the pavilion was designed as an intimate sanctuary for Jeanne Bécu, Comtesse du Barry (1743–1793), the last favorite of Louis XV. Located not far from Versailles, the building combined refinement with an early neoclassical symmetry. Madame du Barry entrusted its decoration to Jean-Honoré Fragonard, but found his canvases too animated, too free—too “Fragonard”—for the decor she envisioned. She rejected them and turned instead to Joseph-Marie Vien, and later Jacques-Louis David, whose austere neoclassicism aligned better with the emerging pre-revolutionary morality⁴.
This reinterpretation, however, transforms that rejection into a dazzling act of reclamation—pushing the boldness of libertinage even further than Louveciennes had dared to allow.
Tenderness Between Men in the Age of Gallantry
Fragonard’s world was not untouched by masculine intimacy and deep same-sex affinities, often concealed within the social codes of the time. Among his patrons was the Abbé de Saint-Non (Jean-Claude Richard de Saint-Non, 1727–1791)⁵, a clergyman, printmaker, traveler, and enlightened patron whose personality has long intrigued historians. A known lover of art—and of men, according to several contemporary accounts—he moved in circles of artists, actors, and young models where sensual attraction mingled naturally with aesthetic kinship. Saint-Non financed Fragonard’s celebrated Italian journey with his protégé Hubert Robert, a voyage that produced works of unusual sensuality and freedom.
Though it would be anachronistic to speak of a “homosexual milieu” in the modern sense, these networks of cultivated men shared a culture of learned gallantry in which desire, gaze, and intellectual complicity formed a language of their own—a fertile ground for Fragonard’s imagination.
Metamorphosis of Libertinage
By altering only the human figures, the statuary, and a single inscription, the variation faithfully preserves Fragonard’s Rococo structure while reinvesting it with new energy. The galant register, inherited from the libertinage of the eighteenth century, receives an audacious reinterpretation. Originating in France before radiating across Europe—most notably in Italy, Germany, and England—libertinage was both a philosophy and an art of living: it celebrated freedom of body and mind, the emancipation of desire, and the pleasures of sensual experience, while playing with moral and religious constraint.
In this variation, that spirit of defiance persists but is transposed: the galant encounter becomes a scene of masculine passion, where grace and power, anticipation and consummation, tenderness and vigor converge.
Curiosity Piqued?
1. Rosenberg, Pierre, Fragonard, Paris, Réunion des musées nationaux, 1987.
2. Cuzin, Jean-Pierre, Jean-Marc Nattier, 1685–1766, Paris, Arthena, 1999.
3. Wildenstein, Georges, Fragonard: Catalogue complet de l’œuvre peint, Paris, Wildenstein Institute, 1960.
4. Brookner, Anita, Jacques-Louis David: Empire to Exile, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1980.
5. Levey, Michael, Painting and Sculpture in France 1700–1789, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1993.
