Héro et Léandre

This 1841 Hero and Leander at the Louvre depicts the tragic classical love story of the youth who swam the Hellespont nightly to visit his lover Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite, until he drowned in a storm and she threw herself into the sea. The myth combined aquatic setting, night, passionate love, and death—all subjects that resonated with French Romantic sensibility. Chassériau painted this during or shortly after his Italian journey, when his synthesis of classical training and Romantic emotional intensity was crystallizing. The combination of the heroic male swimmer, the waiting woman, and the fateful sea offered him the opportunity for both figure painting and atmospheric seascape.

The mythological lovers are rendered with Chassériau's characteristic combination of classical drawing and romantic emotional coloring, the nocturnal sea setting creating dramatic atmosphere around the doomed romance.