Pygmalion and Galatia

In 1786 the French sovereign Louis XVI ordered a series of paintings from the painter Jean-Baptiste Regnault to decorate the Queen’s “Salon des Nobles”, in Versailles. The successful painter painted the origins of the arts, that of painting and that of sculpture, in the image, where Pygmalion, in love with the statue he sculpted, is intent on dialoguing with it. The clouds in the background are a prelude to his metamorphosis into the beautiful Galatea.