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“The Funeral of Atala: The Savage, The Virgin, and The Romantic”
Heather Bailey
Art History Major
Georgia College and State University
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The Funeral of Atala:
The Savage, The Virgin, and The Romantic
The French Revolution developed and defined a new cultural attitude referred to
as Romanticism. The movement emphasized human emotion and the imagination in
opposition to the reason and rigor of Neoclassicism during the late eighteenth-century.1
Leading the French Romantic art and literary movements were none other than AnneLouis de Roussy Girodet-Trioson, pupil of Neoclassicist leader Jacques-Louis David, and
François-Rene de Chateaubriand, respectively. In 1801, Chateaubriand wrote a Romantic
novella, entitled Atala, in which the Christian-Indian maiden commits suicide in fear of
breaking her vow of chastity. 2 Girodet depicted the tragic burial scene of Chateaubriand‟s
novella in his painting, The Funeral of Atala, in 1808.3 The use of Christian iconography
in Girodet‟s painting is apparent; however, it is the significance of virginity that ties
together pictorial and literary elements of both the sacred and secular worlds.
At first glance the painting has an uncanny resemblance to previous depictions of
The Entombment by artists such as Giovanni Battista Crespi and Guercino; however, the
exotic setting, the depiction of death, and the intense emotion make The Funeral of Atala
a model piece of Romantic artwork.4 Girodet‟s interpretation of Atala‟s burial is framed
by cave walls with a scenic view of the wilderness in the background. A cross stands
amongst an opening in the foliage and emits a strong beam of light into the shelter of the
stone walls. Atala also cradles a wooden cross against her body. The stone and the
wooden crosses in the composition are architectural metaphors that represent the church.
The wooden cross is the central symbol for Christianity and its shape gives the standard
Western church plan structure, while the stone is that which Jesus builds his Church
upon.5
Within the cave, Chactas sits in a bright red loincloth on the edge of a rectangular
hole dug into the ground (presumably where Chactas and the missionary will rest Atala‟s
body). He passionately clings to her covered feet while the missionary stands, fully
dressed in a brownish-colored cloak, holding her upper body with his head held down in
reverence. The missionary, identified as Father Aubry, is prominent as he portrays the
Holy Church. Father Aubry stands tall and upright, not only in the composition, but also
with God. 6 Both men have their feet placed within the rectangular burial pit that can be
interpreted into a religious chthonic aspect.7 This creates a transition between what is
above ground to what is below the ground. As stone and wood represent the Church and
its inner sanctuaries, the interior of the earth represents the housing of the image of a
god.8
The appearance of Atala‟s lifeless body conflicts itself in the sense that, although
she is dead, she still looks beautiful in her sheer white garments, even graceful, and her
grip on the wooden cross that she holds in her hands seems to stay tight. The portrait of
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Atala can also serve as a transition between life and death. With the subject matter of
death, portraits create a strong response from the viewer as well as an automatic
connection between the person‟s image in the painting and the real person. This
phenomenon can reach to the extent at which the portrait itself actually becomes the
person.9
The dull color palette (in exception to the vibrant white) of dark greens, browns,
and reds of The Funeral of Atala are similar to that of Caravaggio‟s The Death of the
Virgin.10 Both images share the chiaroscuro effect and have light directed from a source
that shines down in a single diagonal beam. The light in Girodet‟s painting illuminates
upon the spiritual and sacred love between God, Atala, and the missionary. The sensual
bare back of Chactas and the breasts and lips of Atala are merely grazed by the light as
they are connected by a secular love. Though Caravaggio shows the Virgin Mary
immodestly by revealing her legs, Girodet retains Atala‟s virginal essence by completely
covering her legs and feet. This detail is also seen in Fra Filippo Lippi‟s painting of the
Death of the Virgin as well. 11
Girodet continues to use the contrast of light and dark to form threedimensionality as well as to juxtapose left and right, evil and good, immoral and holy,
and ignorance and knowledge. These juxtapositions are symbolic with the sheep and
goats at the Last Judgment and can be found in the book of Matthew 25:31-33.12 The left
region of the painting contains repeated elements suggesting evil and immorality. The
half naked body of Chactas and his long tousled hair are portrayed as immoral. The
abandonment of his former evil way of life and turning to Christ in repentance has earned
Chactas the title of the “great sinner,” shared by Mary Magdalene.13 Additional
references to Mary Magdalene are the color red that he is wearing and the verity that he is
clasping onto the feet of Atala.14 The red loincloth that Chactas is wearing also
represents a common conception of the color red, lust, which would have also been
considered immoral and more directly related to Chateaubriand‟s novella as Chactas
passionately longed for Atala.
Chactas‟s hunched posture and his placement close to the ground, nearly to the
extent of being completely bowed over, reveal his reverence and servitude to Atala and
the missionary while also foreshadowing his future reverence and servitude to
Christianity. As a Native American in the seventeenth-century, to be a slave or a servant
to the white Christian-European settlers would have been common, also explaining the
body language of subjection.15 However, the romantic and intimate way Chactas holds
the feet of Atala illustrates his capability of affection and thus condemns the common
perception of Native Americans as savages.
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Fellow Romantic artist Eugene Delacroix, and American artist George Catlin,
mourned for the Native Americans as they knew that these indigenous peoples could not
escape the terrible fate of forcibly having to forfeit their land to the white ChristianEuropean settlers. Based on Chateaubriand‟s novella, Atala, Delacroix‟s painting, The
Natchez, features a Native American couple fleeing from the massacre of the Natchez
tribe with their newborn son by the Mississippi River.16 In comparison with Girodet‟s
Funeral of Atala, the two paintings share similarities such as the red draperies of the
darker-skinned Native American, the beam of light radiating on the woman who looks
distressed and on the verge of death, and the male on his knees at the feet of his lover.
However, the lack of Christian symbols in The Natchez leaves Delacroix‟s Native
American couple doomed.
George Catlin‟s oil on canvas, The Last Race, Mandan O-Kee-Pa Ceremony,
features a Native American tribe taking part in a four-day ceremony that consisted of a
painful initiation of the most talented young men of the tribe.17 This painting is one of a
series by Catlin in which the Native Americans are portrayed as rather savage-like. In the
painting Native Americans run around in a circular motion, wearing loin-cloths and
dragging each other across the ground as onlookers sit and stand on top of mounds with
hands raised as if to cheer on the runners. While the red tones and the clothing of the
Native Americans in Catlin‟s painting is similar to that of Chactas in The Funeral of
Atala, the image of the Native Americans conveyed by Catlin seems completely barbaric
in contrast to the serene and sensual depiction of the Native American Chactas, by
Girodet.
The wilderness is a repeated theme of literature and art symbolic of virtue and
virginity, especially during the age of Romanticism. Romantics believed nature was less
corrupt than civilization and in Chateaubriand‟s novella, Atala and Chactas elope and
wander the wilderness for twenty-seven days until they are trapped in a storm, in which
they meet the missionary and find shelter in the cave.18 The overlapping of foliage creates
depth in the composition and into the wilderness. While the trees of the wilderness refer
to the metaphor for wood, the cross, as the central symbol for Christianity, it too has its
own separate central symbol in Christianity. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
contained the fruit that caused the Fall of Man, and redeemed the Fall through the wood
of the Cross.19 The cross amongst the wilderness can also be interpreted as a common
metaphor of people finding God or spiritual awakening in the midst of hardships.
Amongst the background of greenery, past the walls of the cave, the ground
resembles slightly rolling hills or mounds. The Natchez Indians were mound builders and
worked together to construct these flat-toped ceremonial bases for their sacred buildings.
The raised ceremonial grounds help to link earth with sky, and thus, life on earth with
eternal life.20
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In Girodet‟s burial scene, Atala is horizontal and lies parallel to both the bottom
edge of the canvas and her grave. However, the background landscape is divided into two
opposing angles; the left side of the canvas, angling from the top left to the bottom right
and the right side, angling from the top right to the bottom left. The larger horizontal
figures in the bottom of the composition create a stable base for a pyramidal composition,
making the significance of Egyptian pyramids in correlation to transitional architecture of
religious art pertinent. Now capped with limestone, Egyptian pyramids were originally
capped with gold, connecting the highest point with the sun god.21 The way sunlight is
reflected off of the gold links life on earth with eternal life through the pharaoh‟s burial
place. In The Funeral of Atala, the cave walls come together at opposite angles to form
the sides of the pyramidal composition and the „cap‟ of the pyramid is represented in the
golden palette tip where the Cross stands. The concept that most gods are elevated and
live in either the sky or upon the tops of mountains is widespread. This promotes the idea
of a transitional architecture between worshipers and their gods.22
As Atala lies dead in the arms of Chactas and the missionary, her hands still
demonstrate her devotion to God after death as they seem to remain folded in prayer, also
demonstrated in Hugo van der Goes rendition of The Death of the Virgin.23 Both
paintings reveal the contrast of grief and sadness, in the faces of the onlookers, to the
peacefulness and detachment, which the virgins evoke. The visage of the mourners
symbolizes the grief that devotion can cause. The lifelong commitment of religious
devotion, or spiritual marriage, presents the literary theme of virginity.24 A figure that
could uphold these values would represent a celestial realm higher than that of which the
actual narrative story takes place.25
The significance of virginity is not only portrayed in Girodet‟s painting of The
Funeral of Atala or Christian iconography, but in the personal life of Chateaubriand
himself. Born half-dead in the year of 1768, Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand was vowed
to wear only the colors of white and blue until the age of seven in honor of the Virgin, to
whom he owed his life. He was an outcast to his family during his childhood and,
equally, so was his older sister, Lucile, who later joined the convent and, ironically, also
“owed her life” to the Virgin. Through these commonalities, they developed a strong
bond and Chateaubriand became extremely protective of her. Their bond was so intense
that it has been often speculated as incest, or the impossible love.26
In Chateaubriand‟s novella, Atala, it has been documented that the characters of
Atala and Chactas are parallel to his sister, Lucile, and himself.27 Atala takes a vow of
chastity as her mother‟s dying request, and Chactas devotes his life to the Virgin after
Atala‟s death. In the novella, Chactas and Atala discover that they are related, more in the
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sense of a stepbrother and stepsister, again repeating the theme of impossible love that
was popular for Romantic literature and art.
In 1784, Girodet entered the studio of leading painter of the French Revolution
and renowned Neoclassicist, Jacques-Louis David. Under David, Girodet won a four-year
scholarship to study in Rome, sponsored by the French Academy where he broke away
from the stiff neoclassical style into his very own imaginative and emotional attitude. Led
by Girodet and the rest of the French school, Romanticism combated the political
propaganda of Neoclassicism.28 Romanticism was also considered a part of the CounterEnlightenment, emphasizing intuition rather than rationale. The movement, as well as
Girodet, escaped Neoclassicism‟s obsession with classical forms. Romantics celebrated
natural American landscape, the „noble savage‟ or the idealized Native American living in
harmony with nature, and other exotic subject matter of art and literature.29
Girodet‟s portrait, François-Rene de Chateaubriand, of 1809, has come to
symbolize Romanticism in its entirety appropriately as he is the “Father of
Romanticism.”30 Chateaubriand stands in the foreground with ruins and greenery
surrounding him. His hand stays tucked within his waistcoat in opposition to the
Napoleon-esque hand found in Jacques-Louis David‟s Napoleon Crossing the Alps.31
The portrait of Chateaubriand stands as the very image of Romantic heroes: physically
attractive, aristocratic, usually an orphan, very troubled, oddly appealing, and
misunderstood. The heroes typically have no friends and never take advantage of what is
given to them, especially in the form of lovers.32 When all else fails, they establish their
faith and eventually decide to settle for the love of someone who is unavailable or the
impossible love, as with Chactas. Hardly do these „heroes‟ ever die of a noble cause
instead, they die of suicide or depression, as with Atala.33
While the story of heroine Atala can seem dulled with the knowledge of her
tragically stereotyped fall from grace, Girodet still manages to evoke her martyrdom and
virginal essence through Christian iconography and the effect of light. Anne-Louis de
Roussy Girodet-Trioson believed that literature and art could only benefit mutually from
one another and that an artist should be inspired by literature in the same way as a poet
should be inspired by a great piece of art.34 Girodet‟s passion for classical and modern
literature is reflected in the subject matter of his painting in which he interprets the burial
scene in Chateaubriand‟s novella, Atala, as he combines classic Christian iconography
with the modernity of the Romantic ideals of emotion, the pure with the exotic, resulting
in an altarpiece-like work of art.
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Bibliography
Adams, Laurie Schneider. The Methodologies of Art: An Introduction. Boulder:
Westview Press, 2010.
Barnett, Jim. "The Natchez Indians." Mississippi History Now. Mississippi Historical
Society. (Oct. 2007). http://www.mshistory.k12.ms.us/index.php?id=4 (accessed
April 30, 2010).
Bingham, Caleb, trans., Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand’s Atala. Boston: Cornhill,
1814. http://books.google.com/books?id=atala20chateaubriand&=page=false
Conn, Steven. History's Shadow: Native Americans and Historical Consciousness in the
Nineteenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
de Caso, Jacques. "Girodet." The Art Bulletin 51, no. 1 (Mar. 1969).
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3048593 (accessed Feb 21, 2010).
Giles, Paul. American Catholic Arts and Fictions: Culture, Ideology, Aesthetics
(Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture). New York City:
Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Havens, George R. "Romanticism in France." PMLA 55, no. 1 (Mar. 1940).
http://www.jstor.org/stable/458421 (accessed Feb 21, 2010).
Kren, Emil and Daniel Marx. http://www.wga.hu (accessed Feb - May 2010).
Maurois, Andre. Chateaubriand - Poet, Statesman, Lover. Toronto: Maurois Press, 2008.
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Endnotes
1.
Allan H. Pasco, Sick Heroes: French Society and Literature in the
Romantic Age 1750-1850 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1997), 1.
2.
Caleb Bingham, trans., Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand’s Atala (Boston:
Cornhill, 1814).
3.
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, The Funeral of Atala, 1808.
4.
Giovanni Battista Crespi, Entombment of Christ. Guercino, The
Entombment of Christ, 1656.; Both paintings depict the caved walls with the wilderness
in the background.
5.
Matthew16:18 Revised Standard Version. The scripture states, “And I say
unto thee, That thou are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against it.”
6.
Paul Giles, American Catholic Arts and Fictions: Culture, Ideology,
Aesthetics (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture) (New York City:
Cambridge University Press, 2008), 37.
7.
Laurie Schneider Adams, The Methodologies of Art: An Introduction
(Boulder: Westview Press, 2010), 237.; chthonian refers “in, under, or beneath the earth
pertaining to spirits and deities of the underworld”.; Dictionary.com, s.v. “Chthonic”
http://dictionary.reference.com/ (accessed: May 1, 2010).
8.
Adams, The Methodologies of Art, 237.
9.
Ibid., 238.
10.
Caravaggio, The Death of the Virgin,1606.
11.
Fra Filippo Lippi, Death of the Virgin, 1467-69.
12.
Matthew 25:31-33. The scripture states, “When the Son of Man shall come
in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his
glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from
another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on
his right hand, but the goats on his left.”
13.
Giles, American Catholic Arts and Fictions, 37.; Fra Bartolomeo,
Lamentation, 1511-12.
14.
Ibid., 38.
15.
Steven Conn, History's Shadow: Native Americans and Historical
Consciousness in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006),
62.
16.
Eugene Delacroix, The Natchez, 1823-35.
17.
George Catlin, „The Last Race’ Mandan O-Kee-Pa Ceremony, 1832.
18.
George R. Havens, "Romanticism in France," PMLA 55, no. 4 (1940),
http://www.jstor.org/stable/458421, 13.
19.
Genesis 2, 3. Chapter 2 provides the background for the Fall while chapter
3 explains the actual happenings of the temptation, the Fall, and God‟s Judgment for man
and woman.
20.
Jim Barnett, "The Natchez Indians," Mississippi History Now, Mississippi
Historical Society (2007), http://www.mshistory.k12.ms.us/index.php?id=4.
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21.
Dawood Khan, picture posted on "The Pyramids and Sphinx at the Giza
Plateau: P1019921," Dawood Khan's Blog, picture posted Aug. 15, 2008.
22.
Adams, 236.
23.
Hugo van der Goes, The Death of the Virgin, 1480.
24.
Pasco, 36.
25.
Ibid., 37.
26.
Andre Maurois, Chateaubriand - Poet, Statesman, Lover (Toronto:
Maurois Press, 2008), 4-5.
27.
Ibid., 6.
28.
Jacques de Caso, "Girodet,” The Art Bulletin 51, no. 1 (1969),
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3048593, 85.
29.
Pasco, 89.
30.
Anne-Louis de Roussy Girodet-Trioson, Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand,
1809.
31.
Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon Crossing the Alps, 1811-15.
32.
Pasco, 6.
33.
Bingham, 153.
34.
de Caso, 86.
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Images
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