The artist Anne-Louis Girodet Trioson (1787-1824), a student of Jacques-Louis David, had a unique sense of mystery and poetry. Contemporary artists and critics perceived his funeral in 1825 in Paris as a symbolic demise of the grand tradition of French classicism. In this book, the authors have mined the rich archives at the Musee Girodet in Montargis, France, and the many letters and documents that survive, to record Girodet's social and private life as well as his large and important body of artistic work. Principally known for his celebratory work for Napoleon (who gave Girodet his first important commission - Ossian receiving the Spirits of the French Heroes) and the portraits he made for the king under the Restoration, the authors describe Girodet's fine portraits, paintings, drawings and prints. Girodet was also a prolific writer who wrote almost as much as he painted. All his paintings share the same classical idea that visual arts were an aesthetic analogy of poetry. The book reveals the important role he played in the transformation of French painting during the first quarter of the nineteenth century.