Le lion amoureux

Under the shade of trees a shepherdess, her breast bared, bends over the great lion that has fallen in love with her, trimming his claws at the urging of her father so that he cannot wound her; behind them armed men with their dogs wait, ready to fall on the helpless animal, held back by one young woman’s raised hand. The subject comes from the Fables of La Fontaine (IV, 1), the tale of the lion who gives up his nature for love. Camille Roqueplan, a French Romantic painter of the generation of Delacroix and Decamps known for luminous, often literary scenes, painted this small version around 1836. The painting is held in the Petit Palais, musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris.