The Punishment of Cain

Painted when he was only sixteen years old, this brooding composition formed part of Chassériau’s successful submission to the Salon of 1836. It depicts the exile of Cain and his family as retribution for the murder of his brother Abel. Chassériau contrasts lights and darks to convey an immediate feeling of pathos. Overcome with sorrow, the group wanders into a landscape devoid of light, vegetation, and human scale. Their bodies form the painting’s only vertical elements, further emphasizing the bleakness of the wilderness. Their milky rendering reveals Chassériau’s artistic debt to Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, the painter’s mentor, who had recently left Paris to head the French Academy in Rome. The only visible face in the composition is that of the child to the left. Modeled after the artist’s own visage, it suggests his emotional identification with subjects concerning unease and isolation.