Explore the Artistic influences of this artwork.
Moreau, who traveled in Italy for nearly a decade, was influenced by, among other things, Michelangelo's depiction of the human form and Leonardo da Vinci, with whom he shared a similar sense of color (Moreau and Leonardo's light blues are very similar) and a similar philosophical disposition. Like Leonardo, Moreau believed that painters ought not to strive to simply reproduce scenes from nature, but to organize a scene from nature on a canvas in such a way as to provide a spiritual insight, going so far as to call painting "the Language of God." In Les Chimères, one sees the influence of Leonardo in the effeminate figure of a man near the center of the painting, a figure which is uncannily similar to Leonardo's depictions of both St. John the Baptist and the Apostle John, even down to the hair and the cryptic smile. In addition to these Renaissance influences, Moreau followed in the footsteps of Nicolas Poussin, another philosophically-disposed painter, and also partly the Neoclassicists, with whom he shared a love of proportion, accurate form, and harmony of composition.
In the thrust of his work, however, Moreau was thoroughly within the Symbolist school, and preceded certain parts of it. The Symbolist Manifesto, published by Jean Moréas two years after Moreau stopped working on Les Chimères, states that in the work of the Symbolist artist, "all ... real world phenomena will not be described for their own sake; here, they are perceptible surfaces created to represent their esoteric affinities with the primordial Ideals." Les Chimères is exemplary of this idea of capturing the absolute Ideal through sensory description—the setting in nature, the presence of the mythological creatures, the sensuousness of the women, etc., are significant not in themselves but in so far as they capture and reflect the absolute Ideal of Woman as seen by Moreau and the mythological tradition, Woman as elemental, primordial, mysterious.
Nicolas Poussin Symbolist Michelangelo St. John the Baptist John the Baptist Jean Moréas Leonardo da Vinci Neoclassicist