“Love is like oxygen, you get too much, you get too high, not enough and you’re gonna die.” - Sweet, 1978
Pluto, the planet of intensity, destruction, transformation and rebirth, entered Aquarius on Nov. 19, 2024 and will remain there until March 8, 2043. The last time Pluto was in Aquarius was from 1778 – 1798, which coincided with the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Age of Enlightenment. Pluto is a planet associated with death, destruction, and the underworld. When it enters Aquarius, it can influence transformation, personal growth, power dynamics, sexuality, revolution, and technology.
A fine example of Pluto’s influence on society can be found in gallery 633 of the Met Museum. There you’ll find Jacques Louis David’s 1788 commissioned double portrait of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier and his wife, Marie Anne Lavoisier. It is one of David’s most famous paintings and arguably the greatest example of neoclassical portraiture ever painted. The exquisite painting tells the story of Pluto's influence better than any I’ve come across.
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier was a scientist, best known for discovering oxygen’s role in combustion, creating the language used to communicate elements in chemistry and the law of conservation of mass. He was the father of modern chemistry and a rockstar in late 18th century France. Though, in this portrait, Antoine is not the star, Marie Anne is. Look at the way she towers over him as he looks up at her adoringly. She was one of Jacque Louis David’s students, and Lavoisier was so taken with her that he married her when she was only 13. evidently David was taken with her too. When they posed for David in 1788, she was 30 and Antoine is obviously still smitten with her. Marie Anne performed a very important role in her husband’s career, mainly as an illustrator and translator of his work, but also his muse and PR person. Her talents allowed her husband’s discoveries to spread throughout the world.
Madame Lavoisier is dressed in a simple but elegant white cotton dress which was the height of fashion in 1788 France. This style of dress was made popular by Marie Antoinette who rejected the formal silk gowns required at court functions. The style, considered scandalously nude when Marie Antoinette embraced the minimal trend, had become the standard of high fashion by the time this portrait was painted. Monsieur Lavoisier’s attire too, is elegant and obviously expensive, but stripped of most of the unnecessary ornamentations of male court dress, with just a whiff of frippery at his neck and wrists.
The portrait also inadvertently highlights another invention of the age. Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, invented in 1794, led to the vast cotton plantations of America’s south and enabled mass acceptance of the fabric along with the expansion of slavery. Whitney’s invention and King Cotton were the beginning of the industrial revolution, powering an explosive economy that culminated in the Civil War.
Jacques Louis David’s painting tells a story of science, love and tragedy in an unusual depiction of equality, intellectual partnership and modernity. The masterpiece celebrates the couple’s brilliance and also foreshadows their tragic fate. Love was not enough, Antoine was executed by guillotine during the French revolution, leaving Marie Anne to preserve his legacy.
As we girdle-up for another gilded administration unaware of what’s really happening with the common people, Pluto’s current residence in Aquarius, if anything similar to its last stay there, tells us that we can expect 19 years of technological advances, social unrest, political upheaval and revolution. Who knows who will lose their head. In the meantime, have a nice piece of cake.