The representation of erotism in the firts years of the symbolist movement caracterizes itself by a dive into the antique

myths. It is thanks to these universal metaphors that symbolist artists managed to express their fantasies while avoiding choking the public. It is at least what Freud thought when he affirmed that The artist first knows how to give to his waken dreams such a form that they lose all personal character likely to repelse anyone.
In order to reach the divine perfection, the artists seek religion, a theme widely studied by Moreau, one of the main painters of the symbolist movement. He admires in Michel Angelo, his ideal of somnanbulism. Moreau then paints characters he said were absorbed into their dreams which transport them to other worlds. And these other worlds in which they are unconscious of their own motion represent the religious universe where all kind of idols struck out. We find those aspects in his most famous painting : LApparition, where is represented, in the byzantine way, the martyr of Saint John the Baptist, where Moreau mixes cruelty to sensuality in order to spark off admiration or even adoration. Thanks to his golden touches, he shows the absolute perfection of his work and amplifies this idea of an idol. He then lets appear, between the executioner and the victim, a strange complicity. The writer Des Servites said about the fantasmatic fascination of the painter this mystic pagan, this illuminated that can abstact himself enough from the world to see those cruel visions shine . Moreaus technique is very neat even meticulous but in this painting, his obsession for Salom, cruel merciless woman, stays more important. After her sensual danse which her pose still testifies, the heroin incarnates the most perfect triumph of the dangers of feminity to men. Whereas this myth used to be used by the Church to show the pervert effects of fminin sduction, it offers Moreau a brand new interprtation, more imaginativ so more true because according to him it is through the dream that we get closer to reality. Moreau blocked out the movements of his protagonist within a preconceived space that was probably purely mental. His goal was not only to refine compositional dtails bt to find a bodily pose that conveyed the culminating point of the drama. He also violates the rules of plausibility specific to history painting by suspending the head of John the Baptist in a sort of golden halo, creating a dialogue between the two protagonists and therefore shifting the scene onto another plane. His apparent artistic contradiction reflects the idea that he believes an artist is a workman who assembles dreams. This explains why he mixes realism to surreal visions.