The republican erotica is not just about the neoclassical hair-do, à la Titus. Sure, the hair length is important, add to that her look, direct and serious, and we have a new woman: rococo is gone, and with it all playfulness. Yet there is something that a sociologist would call a residue. Right when all was taken away, her modest gesture gave some of it back; there, like with women’s fashions, the coquettishness has switched the register, concealing something, it has revealed just as much, but elsewhere.
Pierre-Narc0iss Guérin, 1794 (Musée du Louvre, Sully, French Paintings, XVIII c.)
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