Madwoman With A Mania Of Envy Summary

Early 19th-century painter Theodore Gericault was very fascinated by the human mind. With a family and personal history of mental illness, Gericault strove to depict the darker and more mysterious aspects of life in his artwork. As a Romanticist, Gericault attempted to communicate intense human experience through his paintings; his piece Madwoman with a Mania of Envy, for example, is one of several of Gericault’s portraits of the insane possessing a peculiar hypnotic power (Gardner 654). Originally, the series was not intended for public display, but instead were painted by the request of a friend—psychiatrist named Etienne-Jean Georget. Modeling his psychiatric patients at the Salpetriere, Dr. Georget envisioned a series of paintings that would capture the inner workings of the human mind and offer a detailed description of each of their facial features (Robbins 1).
Some even claimed that an illness could be detected from facial expressions (Robbins 1). Gericault illuminated an elderly woman whom was suffering a mental illness in his painting, Madwoman with a Mania of Envy (Robbins 2). While at a first glance this woman may have appeared completely normal, a closer look at Gericault’s loose brushstrokes may expose the unraveling of the woman’s mind. Her mouth is tense, she is wearing a worried expression, and her eyes are rimmed with red as if she hasn’t slept in days. Her messy gray hair and untidy clothing suggest that she may be feeling confused and disordered with her life at large (Meyer