Around 1780 -1890 · Ghost, myth, dream and sublime beyond the visible world

Fantastic romanticism opens painting to specters, gods, witches and visions: imagination becomes a territory where fear, desire and revelation take shape.

Around 1800, romantic artists refused to limit the image to what the eye can verify. William Blake gives precise anatomy to a tiny apparition; Goya transforms collective fear into Sabbath, theft and devouring; Delacroix, Turner and their contemporaries reread Dante, Faust, Hamlet and the Bible as color dramas. Ancient myths return in an inner form: Prometheus embodies revolt, Odysseus the attraction of danger, Saturn the violence of time. Later, Rossetti, Moreau and Waterhouse extend this imagination into a more precious painting, where mermaid, angel and heroine seem suspended between dream and story. The collection brings together religious visions, nightmares, literature and mythology. The fantastic does not constitute a decorative escape: it makes visible what an era experiences without being able to represent it directly. The selection "Fantastic, myths and romantic visions" notably compares The ghost of a flea and Saturn devouring one of its children. Its reading favors the atmosphere.

The romantic vision does not deny reality: it adds to it the invisible forces - memory, fear, desire and destiny - which determine human experience.